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Baby Kassandra KayMedical Support

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At 20 weeks pregnant we found out that this sweet little girl had a birth defect called gastroschisis. This is where her stomach wall didn’t fully form so she had a small hole next to her belly button with her intestines on the outside of her body. With this birth defect we knew time in the NICU was going to be a given and she would have surgery soon after her birth if not the same day as she was born.
She was born on December 15, 2020 and she had what they called closure surgery 3 days after birth. When you have problems with the bowel, multiple things can happen as with any surgery. All humans have a bacteria in their body called E. Coli it lives in your gut and that’s where it stays. With her having surgery on her gut, that particular bacteria was introduced into her bloodstream and it spread like wildfire. It’s a very resistant bacteria that can cause a lot of damage to the body and with any blood bacteria it has a very high chance of getting into your brain, causing bacterial meningitis. Our poor girl did in fact catch this bug and now has full blown bacterial meningitis. She was moved in to isolation and that’s where she will stay for 21 days at the minimum. The first two days were the hardest. She stopped breathing on her own, her platelets had dropped significantly, and her heart rate dropped so low it was in the 50s. She has had two platelets transfusion and one blood transfusion. She started having seizures and didn’t stop. Her poor brain was having over 400 a day her little body was put through the wringer!


She has finally stopped seizing by being completely sedated at this time. She has had the bacteria cleared from her blood but not her brain yet. They are in for a long raid of recovery!

Her mom has stayed with her since she has been born, only coming back one day to get her car.  She lives 3 hours away from the hospital that her daughter is staying at. She lives in her small isolation room in the nicu only leaving her bedside to eat and pump. Every meal she eats cost money and every where she goes cost gas she is currently not working to stay with her little fighter and needs help during this time!! Anything can help and I know she is more than appreciative of the love and support she has gotten from everybody! the prayers are working and we need them still to this day! Thank you to everyone


**UPDATE 1/29/2021**


“I honestly am speechless I spent most of my day cursing myself and asking “why my child why her”?! 

She had another MRI done last night and Again I was awoken very early from my room at the Ronald McDonald rooms in the nicu they explained to me that her head had grown again and that the ventricles were larger I was devastated but I had excepted the shunt surgery before and I was ok with it but they had more to tell me she has what is called multioculate hydrocephalus it’s a rare and “surgically challenging” type of hydrocephalus. 

The picture below is NOT Kassandras brain this is just a picture that shows what this type of hydrocephalus looks like the normal brain has 4 ventricles they don’t connect and they all make and absorb the cerebral spinal fluid the first surgery they performed on her was to connect all of the ventricles and have then drain around the head it’s the least invasive and when they went in they saw that she had multioculates that were also there. they tried to open them up to let the fluid flow through but the surgery wasn’t successful as they couldn’t get to the 3rd ventricle. 

Basically they tried to go in and make one bag to drain the fluid from and her brain has made multiple  small bags in the ventricles and to place a shunt they want to be able to drain the fluid off of the brain but with multiple different “bags” of it they can’t be certain they can drain them all they could put the shunt in and it could work or it could only drain a partial side or one of the pockets of fluid if it’s not able to flow through all the ventricles. 


This is a terrible type of hydrocephalus I would advise you not to read about bc it will break your heart. the mortality rate is high with this type and as she gets bigger it will be worse if they aren’t able to get the brain to drain the fluid off completely. They anticipate multiple surgeries and different shunts to even attempt at her hydrocephalus we are devastated over and over again I have had the highest highs and the lowest lows but this one was probably the worst one yet. I feel completely defeated after this I don’t understand.  I had to leave her room and go stand in a window and just cry for a while because I was filled with such negative things 

I feel like a broken record by now but please pray for us “ -Kelley 

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Donations 

  • Angela Hooper
    • $100 
    • 3 yrs
  • Kelley Moorman
    • $50 
    • 3 yrs
  • Kaitlin Viggers
    • $50 
    • 3 yrs
  • Sheri Joiner
    • $25 
    • 3 yrs
  • Janice Wilkinson
    • $50 
    • 3 yrs
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Organizer and beneficiary

Corey Marshall
Organizer
Nacogdoches, TX
Kelley Harkness
Beneficiary

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