Support Gavin Merkley!

EDIT: We have found a different treatment facility in Utah that is a fraction of the cost of J Flowers. We are going to give this a try and feel confident it will help Gavin.  He will receive his own Neuro Feedback machine to continue using when he finishes his treatment. Because this is so much less expensive, We are funding it ourselves. I would like to return the donations that have been given so far. (I haven't figured out how to do that yet but I will!) THANK YOU for all of your kindness and generosity. We truly appreciate it! If you have donated, please text me at [phone redacted] and I will arrange to return your donation. I don't want to accept money from people until we absolutely have to!


My name is Emily Jensen and I am helping raise money for the Merkley family as they face the exhausting and difficult journey of helping their 10 year old adopted son, Gavin who has FASD, Anxiety, PTSD, Seizures and DMDD.   The Merkley's have tried EVERYTHING under the sun to help their precious Gavin have a normal life for the last 10 years, but his needs have become too much to handle even with the many interventions they have tried, and they need OUR help to get Gavin access to the highest level of professional psychiatric and medical care in the country based out of Houston at the J Flowers Medical Center. Gavin desperately needs us to help right now so that he can receive the professional help he needs!  

I have known the Merkley family for several years and have always admired their open and loving hearts as they have cared for Gavin and also their four other biological children.  Cherie Merkley is affectionately known as "Mama Merkley" by family and friends because she was blessed by God with a "mama's heart" and she has used her special gifts to LOVE BIG and care for her children deeply. I have long admired the Merkley family's sacrifices to become foster parents and have often sat by the sidelines wondering how I could help families like theirs knowing that my husband and I are not in a position of our own to foster.  It dawned on me yesterday when reading one of Cherie's Facebook posts about Gavin's current struggles that while I am unable to be a foster mom, I CAN make a difference in the life of one of these amazing children by adding a financial contribution to giving him every fighting chance to succeed!!

 

 

 

 

The Merkley’s have blessed countless lives in the OKC and Edmond communities and it’s important for anyone reading this to know that they DID NOT want me to set up this fund for them. I had to plead with them to allow me to do this for them after Cherie told me that she and Scott would be willing to sell a car or two and use their savings to help Gavin get into this intensive and expensive program in Houston so that they wouldn’t inconvenience anyone else by asking for help. They are NOT takers and never have been. They are givers and ALWAYS have been! I told them that it was FAR past time for them to allow their friends and family to rise up and be GIVERS to help their family with Gavin's needs in this critical time!

 

The Merkley’s are angels on earth who recognize that EVERY life has value (even life’s that are full of immense challenges most of us can scarcely fathom) and we can help them get their beloved son Gavin the help he needs!

 

 

 

 

Please contribute ANY amount that you can afford!  

 

 

 

 

If you’d like to read Gavin’s detailed life story, please feel free to read on and get your tissue box ready.

 

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GAVIN SCOTT MERKLEY'S STORY - HOW LOVE ALWAYS WINS

 

Gavin came to the Merkley family in July of 2011. They were newly certified foster parents and they were ready to change the world. Gavin was the Merkley's first placement, just days after their training was complete. The Merkley's never planned on adopting a child. Rather, their plan was to foster many children and make a difference in many lives. When the social worker handed Cherie a tiny blue eyed baby, she felt like this little bundle from Heaven was meant to be her son and everything changed in that moment for the entire Merkley family.

 

When Cherie and Scott brought Gavin into their home, he was 6 weeks old and he weighed less than 8 lbs. His arm was still healing from a bite mark related to abuse he had endured in his biological family’s home. He had been in emergency foster care for three weeks because there were no families available to take him. The Merkley family immediately fell in love with this tiny boy and the four older biological Merkley kids would fight over who got to hold him. There had never been a baby that was more loved or given more attention than sweet little baby Gavin.

 

Every week, Cherie and Scott were required to take Gavin for an in-person visit with his birth parents, even though they had severely abused Gavin both in utero and during his first few weeks of life. His birth mother was a heavy smoker and when she would hold Gavin his whole tiny body would tense up and he would scream uncontrollably for the whole hour visit. Cherie and Scott would sit in the next room and cry. The woman that birthed him had not wanted a pregnancy and she proudly admitted that she drank alcohol, smoked and used hard drugs her whole pregnancy. After he was born he was spanked, held under water, bitten, and burned.

 

It was 110 degrees in Oklahoma City the day his biological mother laid him on the burning hot sidewalk in his dirty diaper and let him lie there screaming. A witness called the police and thankfully, Gavin was taken away from her. He was only 3 weeks old, was considered "failure to thrive" and he wasn’t even on the growth chart.

 

When Cherie and Scott took him into their family at 6 weeks, it took them about a month to find a formula that he could keep down. The formula that ultimately worked was very expensive and was not covered by WIC but he could keep it down and was able to begin growing, so that is what the Merkley's bought! He was a happy baby and despite all he had been through he was smiley and cuddly all day long every day.

 

After about 6 months of weekly visits, Gavin's biological parents stopped coming and they also missed several court visits. Eventually, when Gavin was 15 months old, his biological parent’s rights were terminated on the grounds of abandonment. At this point, DHS notified Cherie and Scott that they were going to look for family members within Gavin’s biological family who might want to adopt him. The Merkley's hired an attorney and fought to keep him in their family where he was safe, rooted and bonded. They successfully argued that this precious child had been through enough abuse, trauma and loss and that taking him away from the only family he knew would be irreversibly damaging. The courts ruled in favor of the Merkley’s and allowed them to adopt Gavin.

 

When Cherie told her pediatrician the good news about Gavin’s adoption, he very seriously told her that she was crazy to adopt him. This Doctor said that due to Gavin’s prenatal history and the abuse he had suffered after he was born, he was going to have innumerable problems and challenges as he got older. He told Cherie that she had no idea what she was getting herself into and that parenting him was going to be a nightmare. Cherie, trusting in God’s call, told this pediatrician that Gavin was HER son and she was willing to do whatever it took to love him and parent him.

 

The Merkley’s officially adopted Gavin in November of 2012. It was one of the best days of their lives. Finally the stress of him possibly going back to his birth parents or to anyone else was over. He was Gavin Scott Merkley!

 

As predicted by the Pediatrician, Gavin started having serious behavior problems when he was about 3 years old. He would have raging tantrums out of nowhere for no reason. He would have night terrors and wake up shaking with fear and needing to be held until he could calm down. He was extremely hyper and difficult to calm down for most of the day.

 

The Merkley’s took him to the OU Child Study Center’s ABC Clinic and he was diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder. At that time, and as recently as last year, this particular center did not have a single resource to turn to for help with FASD. Sadly, there are very few resources nationally or internationally to help with this disorder and very few practitioners in Oklahoma that have any training on it at all. Parenting a child with FASD is a lonely and uphill battle!

 

When Gavin was 4 years old, on the advice of many medical professionals, the Merkley's took him to a psychiatrist to get him on medication to help regulate his brain and behaviors. This amazing psychiatrist along with the psychologist that Gavin had been working with for years both fell in love with sweet Gavin and have been there through every change and season to help the Merkley’s help Gavin. The Merkley’s would find a medication that worked well for Gavin and they would think that they had finally found the answer to help him day to day. The medication would work for a short time and then suddenly it wouldn’t anymore.

 

Gavin’s chemistry is so complex and it has been such a fine line between managed and completely off the deep end; there is no in between for him. The Merkley’s have been through just about every medication traditionally used for behavior management in the last 6 years. They also have been through the HALO program, PCIT therapy, regular therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and everything else they have been able to find that might help him. They have spent many thousands of dollars to try to help Gavin have a life of normalcy, but they have exhausted all local resources and need more intensive support.

 

A couple of years ago, Gavin was diagnosed with ADHD, PTSD, and anxiety disorder. Around this same time he started to have destructive rages where he couldn’t control himself and random things would set him off. When he was raging he would scratch his own face and bite himself until he bled. He was also diagnosed with Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder which is basically pediatric Bi-Polar. He started on a medication for that and within 2 months had gained nearly 30 pounds. The doctors took him off of that medication and switched it to a different medication. He lost all of the weight as quickly as he had gained it and around this time he was also diagnosed with epilepsy. He has absence seizures most of the day and night if he’s not on his seizure meds.

 

School has always been extremely difficult for Gavin. He doesn’t learn in the traditional way and frustration causes difficult behaviors for him. When he was repeatedly unable to do what the teachers were asking of him and all of the other kids seemed to be getting it, he began to act out every day. He was asked not to return to his school at the beginning of his 3rd grade year because they couldn’t handle his behaviors. They said they didn’t have the staff for it. He was moved to a different school to be in their behavior program. When he arrived at that school, they said that their program was already full but that they would give him extra support to help him. He was suspended multiple times from this school for his behaviors and he was then sent to a third school where he was in the Special Ed program with a one on one aid. Even with these supports, he was not able to make it through a school day without them calling Cherie to come deescalate him or just take him home. He didn’t have any friends and he was struggling severely. After his 3rd grade year, the Merkley’s pulled him out to homeschool him.

 

Homeschool had been going really well until he started having terrifying hallucinations throughout the whole day. He would see and feel snakes all around him. He would tear his clothes off to try to get the snakes off of him. Not long after these hallucinations began, while the Merkley’s were out to dinner at Outback Steakhouse, Gavin could see, hear and feel a tornado, even though there was no tornado. He was screaming and shaking and trying to get his whole family to safety.

 

The Merkley’s couldn’t calm him down and went to the ER at OU Children’s hospital. They figured out that it was his medication causing the hallucinations, so they took him off of his stimulant medication and tried another one. It also caused hallucinations. He is now not able to take any kind of stimulant medication without this side effect. The social worker at the hospital was looking for a bed in an inpatient psychiatric hospital when Cherie told her that she knew it wasn’t the right move for him. This social worker told Cherie that she would get social services involved if the Merkley’s went against medical advice and didn’t let them place him there. Thankfully, Gavin’s therapist and psychiatrist convinced the Hospital that Cherie was right and it wasn’t the safest place for him to go into a Psychiatric Hospital. Cherie knew that Gavin would struggle mightily if he were put into a place that he was unfamiliar with with no family or support system there to navigate for him or help him. The Merkley’s were able to take him home after this discussion, but things have gotten worse and worse every day.

 

The last 9 years have been exhausting mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially and relationally for the Merkley family as they have tried to find answers, solutions and help to support this precious boy whom they love and adore. There have never been more dedicated parents on the planet who have poured EVERYTHING into supporting their children!

 

Gavin’s behaviors are now affecting every member of the Merkley family and they TRULY NEED OUR HELP!

 

The Merkley’s are committed to never giving up on Gavin and they are committed to helping him be as happy as possible and have as “normal” a life as possible.

 

A crisis intervention company has referred the Merkley’s to the J Flowers medical facility in Houston. This crisis team said that it is the only place they would feel comfortable sending Gavin because Cherie will be able to be with him throughout the evaluation and therapy process. This center has a team of highly specialized doctors working together to not only find medications that can help Gavin but to try to heal and repair Gavin’s brain as much as possible and to give him the chance to try and lead a normal life.

 

The Merkley’s are at the end of their ropes in caring for their precious boy and they truly don’t have anywhere else to turn that they feel comfortable with considering his MANY complex issues. The Merkley’s desperately want Gavin to be healthy and happy as he continues to mature and grow. Their whole family needs peace and Gavin deserves to find peace and serenity in his life. Cherie and Scott are committed to keep trying until their dying days to get him the help he needs. They know that God sent him to their family for a reason and that he was meant to be theirs to love.

 

If you’d like to read more about the J Flowers Medical Center, you can click on the link below.

 

https://jflowershealth.com/treating-adolescents-and-young-adults/

 

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING AND POURING LOVE OUT ON THIS AMAZING FAMILY!