Your love & support means the world to us!

Hi everyone, family and friends. I created this space for those of you who want to, and have the ability to, help Ashley on her road to recovery.

Some of you have asked what happened to Ashley. Here's a quick recap...

Early in December, she started having migraines. Then her nose felt numb and she thought maybe she had a sinus infection. The over-the-counter meds seemed to work and she went to Maui on the family trip on December 15th.

The first couple of days were better. Then her symptoms returned along with numbness in her face, along with some vision issues. She went to Urgent Care and they thought it was due to a sinus infection and prescribed her Doxycycline.

Unfortunately, she started feeling worse, and both eyes started having issues. Her doctor in Arizona said to stop taking the Doxycycline, as that may be making things worse ( side effects from Doxycycline can be migraines and vision issues).

Unfortunately, she didn't get better. Ashley returned to Arizona and awoke on the 1st of January with excruciating pain in her hands and feet. Her doctor told her to go to the ER, and from there she was admitted for testing.

By this time she was also experiencing some dysphasia, also known as aphasia, which is the medical term for difficulty in understanding and producing language, along with reduced cognition in the area of slower processing speed.

She had an MRI of her brain and spine, and a lumbar puncture to rule out infection. The neurologist showed us images of white matter lesions on her brain, highly indicative of multiple sclerosis (MS), and she was given three days of corticosteroids to reduce the lesions.

As of now, Ashley is out of the hospital and home, which we all are thankful for. She's still fatigued, which is only to be expected after this ordeal. Although her symptoms have not yet improved, we’re hopeful they will soon–we just don’t know how long it will take. For now, her vision issues make her dependent on us, as she is still unable to drive or work.

She's recently been getting some IV's of Nad (Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide is a treatment that can stimulate cell regeneration and bolster the immune system in your body.)

She's also started on the Wahls Protocol Diet, which is suggested to also strengthen the immune response in the body. It's named after Terry Wahls, MD, the doctor who created it. After she was diagnosed with MS, she began studying food and vitamins. She changed her diet based on her research and says it helped with her symptoms.

So Ashley is now eating more meat and fish, vegetables, especially green, leafy ones, brightly colored fruit, like berries, and fat from animal and plant sources, especially omega-3 fatty acids. Under this diet, she's no longer allowed to eat dairy products and eggs, grains (including wheat, rice, and oatmeal), legumes (beans and lentils), nightshade vegetables, which include tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, and peppers, or sugar (which are all inflammatory foods).

As you can imaging, this has been a lot for all of us, especially Ashley. I'm now preparing lots of healthy food, as she's not able to. We've got her on a great PPO (Blue Cross/Blue Shield), but it doesn't allow us to see the neurologist we wanted to see at the MAYO Clinic, so we're still working on that part.

As you know, it takes a village. Especially when things like this arise. And thankfully, I have a great village of loving family and friends, like all of you, to help. Here are some of the ways you can do just that:

• Keep Ashley in your heart and prayers

• Remain understanding of the situation we're going through

• Contribute to this fundraiser to help pay for medical bills, co-pays, food, special treatments not covered by insurance, etc. (please don't contribute in this way if you can't afford it - love and prayers are great too!)

As we walk together, with Ashley, on this road of recovery, we'll update this page periodically, indicating the dates of the updates.

I want to personally thank all of you for your love and kindness during this challenging time.