Help For Baby Charlotte's Journey

For the last 7.5 months the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at BC Children's Hospital has been home to Charlotte Palmer.
Charlotte was born on May 7th in Penticton at 29 weeks and just over 2lbs after she was found to be in severe distress.  A NICU resuscitation pediatrician from Vancouver travelled to Penticton with the Infant Transport Team to fly her back to Vancouver at less than 12 hours old.  Charlotte did have a small 3 week venture to the Kelowna NICU during the summer when she appeared to be close to discharge but after getting too sick for the Kelowna NICU she was air evacuated back down to Vancouver by the BCAS Infant Transport Team.
Christina Palmer (Charlotte's mom) has been by her side every day to act as her advocate and take part in her care and has been fortunate to stay at the Ronald McDonald House on the hospoital grounds, which provides accomodations at a lower cost than a hotel. Charlotte's dad Rob Palmer and big brother Rylan (2.5 years old) have been back home in Penticton with trips down to visit the girls and create some normal family moments for their young son.

This has been a challenging journey for Charlotte and her family. She is a long term respiratory support baby and was quickly termed as being "Failure to thrive" as they struggled to find a way for her to gain weight as she fell off the growth chart below 0.1% for babies of her gestation.  The doctors have yet to diagnos a reason why she struggles with her weight gain regardless of the numerous tests and specialities involved.  Another issue Charlotte deals with is having been diagnosed as silently aspirating (liquids continually soil her lungs as she cannot protect her airway) which means she cannot feed orally but has also caused her to have numerous respiratory infections - which combined with her chronic lung disease has meant that when she gets sick, she gets incredibly sick very quickly and ends up back on respiratory support.

Even with all that, Charlotte is one of the happiest babies you will ever meet and has all the nurses and even the support staff wrapped around her little finger.  Charlotte is a very social baby and is always smiling and "talking" to anyone that passes by to sy hi to her.  She has had to endure over 135 days on respiratory support, 5 general anesthetics, 2 surgeries, scopes, over 75 IV's, 3 central lines, 7 lumbar punctures, MRI, enough x-rays that she should glow by now, and general pokes and prodding more anyone her age should.
 
Charlotte is closely followed by a number of specialty services at the hospital and as such even after discharge she will have frequent (montly) visits to see various doctors between Kelowna Hospital and BC Children's Hospital to continue to search for diagnosis and treatment options for her.

I am hoping to put it out there to all co-workers at the Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen, City of Penticton & Naramata residents, RCMP, Search and Rescue to think about helping support this young family financially during this very stressful time.  They have been trying to make it work for over 7 months and could really use the financial support for ongoing medical expenses, travel, accomodations etc. They will most likely be spending Christmas at the Ronal McDonald House in Vancouver, as long as everyone is healthly by then. (Currently Dad and big brother have colds so not allowed to be near Charlotte)