
Urgent Help for Ava's Medical and Family Needs
Donation protected
Hey family and friends, on November 18th, our sweet Ava was diagnosed with acute bronchiolitis due to RSV. We spent a week at home pretty sick, but we thought we were better. Within about a day and a half of no fevers and feeling better, then suddenly her symptoms worsened, and we were back at the emergency department where she was then diagnosed with pneumonia as a complication to the RSV. The RSV had weakened her system and allowed the bacteria into her left lung, and now she has a very large pneumonia on her left lung behind her heart. We were hospitalized that night and spent 4 days in our local hospital pediatric unit. They did 2 days of high-dose antibiotics and then rechecked her, at which time she was again showing improvement. We thought we could then continue on oral antibiotics to begin to prepare to go home. Within half a day, she was worsening again and spiking fevers, so we rechecked everything again. We were then told that she had developed fluid/infection around the outside bottom part of her lung. At that point, our local hospital felt it was time to transfer us to a children's hospital in Philadelphia. We have now been here in the children's hospital, which is an hour and 15 minutes from our home, since Wednesday night. She has continued to spike super high fevers around the clock despite the antibiotics and fever medicines. Today we found out that her labs are showing worsening infection, at which time we had to discuss doing surgery to place a chest tube directly into her body to drain the fluid off her lungs in order to allow the antibiotics a better chance at getting to the actual infection and doing their job. So we will be moving forward with that most likely later today. In all of this, Aspen has been off work for 2 weeks to be bedside with our daughter, and she's ineligible for paid leave. I myself have also had to call out of work and very possibly might need to in order to spend time with my family and give my wife a break. I'm newer at my job, and while I've been told they can grant me medical leave, but again, that is unpaid. We have depleted everything we had to this point just to be with our daughter and to do what we need to in order to get her better. While Aspen has been bedside, we're having to make sure she can buy food and take care of herself, and then I have been stuck needing to travel back and forth as my job also has some requirements before I can get medical leave, and we also have a household and animals to be taken care of. The bills, of course, don't stop, and when we touched base with our landlord to make him aware, we received a short sentiment followed by that either way, if we don't pay, it would be grounds for eviction. It's unfair and part of life that we have these burdens to worry about on top of trying to be present with our sick child and get her better. So that's why we are reaching out for help. This has been a wild ride and has just snowballed beyond our control, and we need a roof over our head to bring Ava home to once this is all resolved. Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated, and if you can't, just please send all the prayers and well wishes you can for our sweet girl to get better and share our story for us.
Organizer
Alfred Hicks
Organizer
Reading, PA