Hello, my name is Kenia.

Those who know me know that I am a very helpful person and I like to help others, but I rarely ask for help, which is why I feel ashamed, but I will tell you my story so that you know why I am doing this.

I have 6 wonderful children, 1 of whom has ADHD, 4 are autistic at different levels. Even though autism runs in the same family, it manifests itself differently in each one, but they all need support. Unfortunately, Utah's health insurance does not cover many of the needs of people with autism. My children are highly functional and independent in many areas, but even so, I have not been able to work and contribute to my home because I dedicate myself only to them.

But I want to focus specifically on my 13-year-old daughter and my 4-month-old baby, because they are the ones I am doing this for.

Monica is a very sweet girl, with a very nice character, her autism level is 1, which means it is very low, but within her autism she has sensory modulation dysfunction, which means that all her senses are very sensitive, she feels things 2 times more than a "normal" person, be it cold, heat, pain, etc. Recently she has been diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, so she has started to lose weight and if we already had problems with the sensory, now with this it is much worse, she describes that her senses are 3 or 4 times stronger, she suffers from a lot of stifling heat, she is having arrhythmias and a lot of sweating for no reason, she is a young girl who had the expectation of being on the cross country team at school, but now she has been recommended that she cannot exercise, we already know that it is not because of Hashimoto's nor is it her immune system attacking her thyroid, but we need to do an ultrasound to know if the thyroid is attacking itself.

Luna is my youngest child, she is four months old, she is a very smiley baby, she is very calm and sleeps all night, so far she has shown good eye contact and responds to her name, which makes me think that she probably is not autistic although we won't know until she is about 4, I'm not sure if she is high functioning with some mild autism but so far there are no signs of that, what is happening to her is that after a month of her birth, she started to get spots on her skin, they call them café-au-lait spots in English, in Spanish it is coffee with milk, those are the first symptoms of a condition known as Neurofibromatosis, there are 2 types of Neurofibromatosis, basically it's a condition that affects approximately 1 in every 3,000 to 4,000 people. In children, neurofibromatosis occurs between the ages of 3 and 16, although it sometimes manifests in babies. To know what type of neurofibromatosis Luna has, we have to do studies with a geneticist and a neurologist.

My husband works a lot and no matter how hard he tries, it's not enough for the treatments for either Monica or Luna. With what he works we live to pay the daily expenses, but not to pay what is coming to us. I have tried to apply for government insurance but according to them our budget is over $611 so we don't qualify, so I have decided to start a business at home, I am making memorial teddy bears, I know that your loved one's clothes are something very special and I will treat them with all the respect that the deceased person deserves, I am also making baby blankets, I could see a way to make shipments if you are far from Utah, but if you are local for an extra amount I will take them to your house, I feel that this is the way I can be productive and make the extra that we need for the care that our daughters require, as a mother it hurts to see my daughters go through all their challenges. Thank you for your compassion, your support, for sharing, your prayers, for your words of encouragement and for supporting me in my endeavor, if it is your wish to make a donation I also appreciate it.