Please help give this little Gentry family a fighting chance

My name is Kristin Sandberg, the proud aunt of TJ Gentry and his wife Alyssah. TJ and Alyssah's story starts this past summer when they learned they were pregnant with a baby girl. They were scheduled to start IVF in December, as they were told they couldn’t conceive naturally. So, this pregnancy was a miracle and a joyous time for them and our family. Lisa's due date was approximately February 1st, 2025.

Then the joy turned to fear. On October 21st, Lisa started to have severe abdominal pain, contractions, and some bleeding, and she was admitted into the hospital. The next day, she became very sick with a fever and pain and had an emergency C-section. The doctors immediately discovered that the placenta had somehow become infected with E. coli, and Lisa went into sepsis that put her in the ICU. As a result, baby Ava Jude was born extremely premature at 24 weeks, also infected with E.coli, and she was sent immediately to the NICU at UMASS Memorial. Lisa had to undergo abdominal surgery as a result of the birth, and was in the hospital as a patient for weeks. Dad, TJ, spent his days running from one floor of the hospital to the next to care for and support his girls, while trying to manage the household and their three dogs. This little family started what should have been an amazing journey with overwhelming challenges.

One day at a time, Lisa healed, and Ava Jude got a little stronger, though she had two brain bleeds, a hole in her heart, and underdeveloped lungs. Ava Jude could not breathe on her own, so she was intubated until she was 32 weeks old. Despite these challenges, she started to gain weight and get stronger, and things were looking up, until, at 38 weeks and almost ready to go home, Ava Jude started not eating, coughing, and struggling to breathe again.

On Saturday, January 18th, Ava was diagnosed with RSV, and this little family’s lives became a living nightmare. Little Ava Jude became very weak and had to be intubated again. She struggled to keep an acceptable oxygen level, even with the maximum amount of air given with the ventilator. She experienced multiple cardiac arrests due to the massive amount of secretions from the RSV and her inability to breathe. The UMASS NICU could no longer take care of Ava, as they had run out of options. So, she was transported to Boston Children's Hospital on Tuesday, January 21st, surviving a very high-risk transport, where she will be for an indefinite amount of time to come.

The stress of this ordeal has been extremely overwhelming for them as a family. TJ and Lisa cannot work, as they are living full-time in Ava’s hospital room praying for a miracle for their baby girl. They are very proud and hard-working people, and they do not ask for anything, but they need it, and baby Ava needs her parents to stay by her side. The doctors are not able to ascertain yet if there has been irreparable damage from the arrests, so they live in a state of limbo, minute to minute, hour to hour.

Please help us to help them so they can stay by Ava’s side and not worry that they’ll lose their home or vehicles, or stress about the medical bills to come.