Our sweet girl contracted botulism from the soil and spent some time in the ICU before downgrading units where we spent about a week in the hospital. From a happy active baby, she started to get limp and wasn’t eating which is what led up to this scary diagnosis and emotional ride. Although we’re going home, she still needs a feeding tube to help her eat. It has been and still is a long road to recovery with lots of therapy and neurology appointments and will take a few weeks for her to be herself again. If you have it in you to help, it would be an absolute blessing to us!

For those of you who don’t know us, here is our story:

The weekend before the Fourth of July, we went camping and everything seemed great. Once the weekday rolled around we started to notice that she was looking off and very tired, and as the days progressed, her head and body started to become more limp and she wasn’t eating. She got dehydrated. upon visiting her primary care doctor he ran labs that looked very concerning but he ultimately said she was just dehydrated. My mom gut told me there was more to the story! We drove right to the children’s hospital where dozens of doctors assessed her and threw out multiple diseases it could be until finally they thought botulism was the most accurate. After being admitted to the icu, I was told not to feed her at all and they hooked her up to iv fluids while the healthcare team gets on the same page. While this is all taking place, doctors are making phone calls to the CDC where they are basically trying to convince the cdc to send us the antitoxin medication. From what the doctors told us, only one place in the US makes the antitoxin which is in California so we had to wait until the next night for the medication to be flown to us! As the second day came they finally put in a feeding tube in our girl where they started to feed her slowly by machine. She was still so limp and weak, it was painful to see as her parents. Once the medication came, they gave it to her and they told us it can still be weeks before she’s back to her normal. Everyday we’re seeing progress but she’s still not my usual active and happy baby, but we know that will take time especially with the help of physical therapy, speech therapy for her eating, and neurology. We never imagined we would be ones to go through something this rare but it happened. Although scary, we have nothing but happiness and a thankful heart for God, family, friends and the amazing healthcare staff that cared for our daughter and us ❤️