HOGS FOR HUMANITY: August 2015

Come join us for our 6th Annual Hogs for Humanity Ride! This year we will be raising money for Jessica and Brielle!

Meet Jessica! Age 10

Jessica is 10 years old and in 5th grade. Jessica was diagnosed with T-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (T-cell ALL) on Sunday October 12, 2014. Jessica started treatment immediately and has been receiving chemotherapy on a regular basis since that time. Jessica goes to the Primary Children’s Hospital for her treatments and doctors there tell us Jessica will be receiving some form of chemotherapy for the next 2 1/2 years. Jessica has a long and difficult road to recovery, but she has a great smile and amazing attitude toward life and her recovery.

Meet Brielle!!!

It's been nearly a year and a half since our sweet little Brielle joined our family but her story began long before that. At 18 weeks along in the pregnancy, we had an ultrasound to find out the gender of our newest family member. We were more than excited to find we were having a second girl. We thought that was the biggest news we would hear that day but our world was turned upside down when the doctor began to explain he was concerned that there may be some complications. We spent the months to come, waiting, wondering and worrying. Although we had many ultrasounds, we had no definitive information on what we would encounter when our baby was born. On July 12, 2013, a 7lb 6oz little girl was taken to the NICU before we ever even got a chance to see her. After what seemed like forever the doctor came in to give us an update on our baby. He had a list from the top of her head to the tips of her toes of things that were wrong with our baby. Brielle was sent to Primary Children's Hospital while we were at the University of Utah. Two days later, we left for home without our baby. That first week of her life we had to sit down with her medical team and make decisions no parent should ever have to make. When given the diagnoses of Beare Stevenson Syndrome, the doctors informed us that with what little information they had, things would indicate that she may not live long and that she would likely spend most of that short life in a great deal of pain from the surgeries that she would require. When given the option to continue her care, we saw it as the most difficult decision we would ever have to make. We chose life! We wanted to give her every chance to survive and beat the odds. It was always discussed "if" she makes it home, rather than "when". Brielle was in the hospital for over two months following her birth before being discharged to home. We were only home for 10 days before she was admitted again. She was home for another three days, then admitted again. This happened many times. Each time Brielle was admitted we feared we would be leaving the hospital without our sweet girl for good. She has since had many surgeries, been hospitalized countless times and given us many scares that we are losing her. Our “family time” is often made possible only through pictures sent back and forth and facetime sessions as each of us is with one of our daughters in separate places. Brielle will likely never walk, never talk, and do very little, if anything, for herself. We have missed out on the typical moments a family with a young baby experiences BUT we strive to celebrate each moment as if it were our last. Brielle cannot do a lot of things, but she does a lot of things they said she would never do. She is on oxygen, a ventilator and many other monitors 24 hours a day. We do not travel lightly which makes it hard for us to go out and when we do we have to be extremely overprotective. Subsequently we cannot do the things we once did, we miss out on family parties and other activities. Our life as we knew it has changed forever, but for the better. Brielle is such a light and inspiration to us all and we don’t know what we would do without her.

HOGS FOR HUMANITY

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Wednesday, August 12, 2015