LIFE WITH BLITZEN...: July 2008

Sunday, July 27, 2008

We are almost there!!!

We had another fantastic weekend! We had our silent auction at the Brookville Picnic to help with travel expenses and such. I believe we raised about $800. Many people came by and showed their love and support.
We are looking into which type of fence we are going to put up in the back yard. It will be so nice to pay that in full!
This Tuesday, the 29th, is our Antiquities picture pick up day. Everyone should have their time to come and get their photos. The pictures turned out to be wonderful fund-raiser. We raised $3000 with the picture coupon sales and bonus money and then another $1500 with the bake sale and donations. A total of $4500!!!! FANTASTIC!!!!
Thanks again to First United Methodist Church for allowing us to hold the event at the Arlington Church. It really worked out well. And again, thanks to ALL who helped pull both of these events off. I could not have done it without you!!!
We are working hard to finish our video to send to 4 Paws about our family. Once that and the money is completely in, Hannah's dog will be selected and the advanced training will begin!!!! I can hardly wait.
Hannah spent the last week at Cincinnati Children's Hospital in the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit. We are in phase 1 of the surgical process. The doctor's want to be sure that her seizures are coming from the same area. We do this by inducing seizures and doing MANY neuro-imaging tests. We had a VERY long week, but we did gain some great information. Unfortunately she did not have enough seizures, so we will be going back for another 5 day stay. I will keep everyone posted....

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Fund-raiser success!!!

What a weekend....The Antiquities fund-raiser went fantastic. We ended up taking pictures of 131 families!! Thank you to everyone who came out to support us and to everyone who helped this weekend.
We are headed to Cincinnati Children's Hospital tomorrow for the rest of the week. We are starting the process to see if she is a brain surgery candidate. It will be a rough and very long week. Please keep us in your prayers....
Next Saturday we are having a silent auction at the Brookville picnic to help raise money for travel expenses. We have some awesome items to auction off!!! Stay tuned...
I will give an update on totals from this weekend as soon as I have them....

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Location for fund-raiser!!

I finally have the location for Hannah's event on July 18-20. The Antiquities photos will be at the Arlington United Methodist Church on National Road. They are so kind to open their doors for us and bless us by holding this event.

I am very pleased to announce that to date we have approximately half the money raised for Hannah's dog!! I am continually humbled and amazed at the generosity of everyone.

An article about Hannah and the fund-raiser will be in the Brookville Star TODAY!! Look for it. I think it turned out really nice.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has already given up their time to help us. And thank you to those who have donated money for Hannah and her furry friend. We are forever grateful...

How this journey started....

Hannah was born prematurely at 34 weeks gestation. She was a relatively healthy preemie; initially having difficulty maintaining body temperature and needing to grow. She weighed 4 pounds 9 ounces at birth. When she was four months old she began to drool, non stop. We were told the first year she was "teething." At 18 months old, we really started searching for reasons of why her shirt was always soaking wet. We saw various specialists who always sent us to another specialist, saying "everything looks okay." She spent years in oral motor/feeding therapy to help her not to drool. It wasn't until she was four years old and in preschool that we started to get some answers. Her preschool teacher commented one day that she wasn't reponding when her name was called. I took this information to her pediatrician who then orderd an EEG, "just to rule it out." Much to our shock and amazement, the results showed, she was having seizures. That is the day our journey REALLY began. Once she began taking seizure medication the drooling almost stopped completely. (She will still drool to this day when she is having seizure activity). Since then, it has been a roller coaster; countless medications and medication changes. She has never really reponded well to any medication.

About two years after she was diagnosed with epilepsy, the doctors noticed that her blood pressure was running high. After many tests, she was diagnosed with hypertension. We still are not sure why, but her cardiologist feels her blood vessels are thicker than normal.

About this same time, we also began looking into why Hannah was such a horrible sleeper. She would thrash, talk, move every which way, during her sleep. The sleep studies revealed that she has alveolar hypoventilation sydrome, which means she has too much carbon dioxide in her system when she sleeps. To help this, she wears a BI-PAP at night. This has been monumental in giving her more effective and quality of sleep.

Every day is a challenge for Hannah and our family as a whole. Blitzen has been an absolutely wonderful addition. She calms herself sometimes just by petting and loving on him. He has been trained in behavior disruptions and will sometimes be able to stop a meltdown from getting out of control.
It has been extra hard on the whole family since daddy is deployed to Iraq. He has been gone since January 09 and will gone until Jan 2010. We get to talk with him by phone and on the web cam; which is nice, but not the same!! Blitzen has helped to make his absence go just a little smoother....