Prayers For Julia’s Road To Recovery #Juliastrong

Everything changed on December 9, 2019 for 18-year old Julia, a beautiful kind-hearted young girl who touches many lives around her. A few days prior, she came down with a nasty case of RSV and bronchitis. We didn’t think much of it until she collapsed on the floor unconscious, and suffered a seizure. We initially thought the cause of the seizure was a bad concussion and was rushed to the ER.

After doing an MRI and CT scan, this seemingly healthy girl was diagnosed with a large mandibular AVM (Arteriovenous Malformation), a rare serious neurological condition which affects less than 1% of the world population. Doctors don’t know what causes it or why it happens, but it appears to be that hers was congenital, meaning she was born with it.

What soon followed after, were many specialists appointments with her neurologist, neuro vascular surgeon, cardiologist, infectious disease specialist, and otolaryngologist, MRIs, CT scans, WBC scans, MRAs, X-rays, and countless blood tests and medications.

Julia recently graduated from high school last year as an honors student and is an active competitive swimmer and has been for 13 years, does a lot of community work outside of her academics, especially helping and spending time with the youth at our local church. She has such an open heart, always smiling, and always loves to help everyone around her and never gives up no matter how tough it would get, always positive and encourages her peers.

This traumatic incident has completely changed her life. She will never be the same person as she was the day before the incident, but she is a fighter to get back on her feet and in the water again.

On February 11th 2020, Julia underwent a cerebral angiogram and first surgery. Unfortunately, it was worse than we originally thought and it was too risky to perform the entire surgery and were unable to remove the AVM. Since then, she’s suffered many episodes of collapsing unconscious, excruciating headaches, fatigue, vomiting, and a couple seizures.

Fast forward to April 19,2020. Julia was once again rushed to the ER by ambulance and found that her AVM had hemorrhaged and had to do emergency embolization surgery to remove it. While she was in the ICU, she suffered severe complications from the surgery which caused her liver and colon to be swollen, inflamed, and infection and severe reactions to narcotics which ravaged through her body. She lost the ability to use the bathroom on her own so she had a bladder catheter, unable to speak, stand, walk, use her arms and legs, think, eat, and could barely tolerate liquid foods. Once she was out of the ICU, she stated to slowly make some progress with tolerating feeds, no longer needed the bladder catheter, learning how to sit up in a chair, whisper a few words, practice standing with a walker. 9 days later, miraculously, she is able to come home.

While she isn’t exactly in complete remission just yet, they were able to remove nearly 90% of the AVM and has a long road of recovery ahead of her with 2 months of physical therapy and cognitive therapy.  Julia is a fighter, and is always determined to give her best of abilities as she can.

We have felt so much love and kindness, and we truly are so thankful for all the prayers and support we have received. We are deeply struggling financially as I, her mom am currently unemployed and we still have yet to pay off other medical bills including her ambulance. While we hate reaching out for help, we really need every help we can get, and we appreciate any amount of donation and sharing.

God bless you all !!!❤️❤️