Zebulun's Bone Marrow Transplant

Hello, we are the Bruvold Family! Teagen (Dad), Ashtyn (Mom), Zavier (2 years old), & Zebulun (3.5 yrs old).

Zebulun has been growing and thriving (or so we thought) for almost 2 years, infection free! But, despite our tireless efforts to keep him safe and our strict adherence to his prophylactic medications he was hit with his fifth invasive infection. After a difficult fight and through prayerful consideration we have decided to move onto the next phase of our health journey. We want to strike while Zebulun is as strong as possible and prevent him from suffering through another horrible infection. This means that we are starting the BMT (Bone Marrow Transplant) process. This will be long and arduous with months of prep and planning. Once we officially begin it will mean relocating for 3-6 months to Calgary, Alberta. Understandably, this puts a substantial hardship on our family if we want to stay together and have eachother for support. We want to be able to focus as much as possible on the treatment and care of our children during this time. Zebulun will undergo chemotherapy, transplant, and subsequent monitoring. Zebulun will need to be isolated for approximately 1 year or longer to protect him in his fragile, immunocompromised state post transplant. This entire process will be trying for all of us, but we are hopeful. We are grateful to his medical team for being supportive of our unique wishes and helping us to finally get a cure for our dear boy's disease.

We want to thank everyone for your prayers and love and support, we absolutely could not get through this without you.

Your donations help to keep our family going during Zebulun's ongoing treatment which includes trips to Edmonton & Calgary pre-transplant, our extended stay in Calgary for BMT, and our extended stays between Edmonton & Calgary for recovery. While we undergo this life-saving treatment your support helps us with accommodation costs, food, personal care, travel, fuel, missed wages, storage, and everything else involved with raising a family. Thank you for lightening our load and allowing us to give our all to our children and eachother so we can get through this!

ZEBULUN'S STORY BELOW (December 2021)

Zebulun is almost 2 years old. From the outside he is a perfectly normal, happy, silly, energetic, and sweet little guy. But, Zebulun has a rare genetic immunodeficiency called Chronic Granulomatous Disease (CGD). Put simply, he has zero functionality in his body to fight fungal and bacterial infections. This puts him at risk for developing serious life-threatening infections on a daily basis. (To learn more about CGD, please visit cgdsociety.org)

He has been suffering with infection after infection since birth. He essentially stopped growing at 11 months old, and no matter how much we brought him into the doctor, we were repeatedly told it was normal, despite him having repeated infections and plateauing in growth. We knew something was wrong, but it was all a mystery until November 2021 when we finally got the diagnosis.

When we finally were taken seriously, he had 5 active infections at the same time. One of them being osteomyelitis (bone infection) that required immediate surgery and a month long course of IV antibiotics, plus another 4 weeks of oral antibiotics. He was admitted in the hospital for a month between Grande Prairie & Stollery Children's Hospital in Edmonton.

This was an incredibly stressful time for us, and created a substantial financial burden. Work was put on hold, prescription costs skyrocketed, travel expenses, living expenses, it all started to add up. We will need to make repeated trips to Edmonton and frequent visits to local clinics, blood labs, etc. His treatment involves multiple expensive medications that he will take indefinitely. And the only curative treatment for CGD is a Bone Marrow Transplant.