KIt's Story:: 11 Months of Fighting for Kit's Life

We feel It is time to share the full story of the journey that brought us here. This has been an 11-month fight for our son's life, marked by systemic failures and medical negligence at nearly every turn. We didn’t enter an innocent system to bully it for fun, rather, our life has been ripped up and torn upside-down by a truly broken American medical system. 11 months, 4 hospitals, 1 flight across the ocean, and Kit is now at a new juncture where he needs all the help he can get. For all of these little snapshots we share of Kits’s story, none of it does justice to the full experience he and we have actually lived. We are so grateful for this new community of thousands of people that have rallied around Kit and our family to literally save his life.

January 2025: A Traumatic Beginning

January 9th: Our son, Kit, was born at 28 weeks. His emergency C-section was ordered based on a single, improperly performed ultrasound. Our requests for a second opinion and steroids for Kit's lungs were denied. Despite this, Kit was born screaming and healthy, with a near-perfect APGAR score of 9/10—not a baby in distress.

Within minutes of birth, he was given a Hepatitis B vaccine, a measure medically contraindicated for a baby weighing only 2.7 lbs.

Our family was immediately uprooted. We lived on the Big Island of Hawaii, but Kit was sent to a NICU on Oahu. Our lease was ending, forcing us to abandon our planned move, leave our 17-year-old with friends, and send our 5-year-old to her dad in California. We were rendered homeless and separated overnight.

January 26th: At just 17 days old, Kit was thriving, close to coming off of a ventilator entirely. A nurse, breaking protocol, moved him without a respiratory therapist, causing him to aspirate fluid. The incident was not charted. For days, doctors dismissed our concerns until an X-ray confirmed his lungs were full of fluid and had developed blisters (pneumatoceles). Days after essentially drowning, his lungs collapsed, his doctors called us and said, you guys need to come “say goodbye.” That night, we watched him be resuscitated 12 times, laying lifeless and dark blue on the table.

Spring 2025: A Cycle of Sabotage and Neglect

After recovering, Kit's progress was sabotaged when a doctor left him on a dangerously high CPAP setting for 12 hours, forcing an emergency re-intubation.

He then contracted a severe infection from a visibly ill nurse who was forced to work due to short staffing. For weeks, we begged for an infection panel as we watched him decline. Our requests were denied until he suffered a seizure while we were bedside. When we asked for a doctor to come to his room, we were instead met by security and forcibly removed from his side for six days.

It was only after we fought to have him moved to the PICU that the team there, on DAY ONE, finally ran the tests and found he had been suffering from a raging, untreated infection for over a month.

Summer 2025 - Today: Trapped in an Inadequate System

The hits kept coming: allergic reactions to IV nutrition and even being fed another mother’s contaminated breastmilk. Desperate to escape, we pushed for a transfer.

Our only option to get him off the island was to transfer within the Kaiser network. At the new hospital, they rushed him into a tracheostomy. They admitted to us they GUESSED on the size. It was wrong and severely damaged his airway. They GUESSED AGAIN on a second trach, damaging his airway in a new spot. The situation was so dire that his ENT admitted she “couldn’t even look at him” and told us to RUN to a state with competent care.

We took that advice and flew Kit across the ocean to our current Kaiser hospital in California. But this facility is not equipped for him. We learned recently that they have only cared for 5 patients with needs like Kit's in the last 10 years.

The lack of experience shows. During a recent staff strike, The cleanliness and care for Kit completely fell off and Kit contracted a dangerous MRSA infection. This has erased all his progress, setting him back to the same condition he was in upon arrival months ago. Today, there is no plan for his recovery. Trapped in his own body, medically paralyzed now for 2 straight months, He is stagnant in a system that has no answers, often sitting alone while we are forced to work.

This is our reality. We need to be with our son, and we need to get him out of this system and into a specialized children's hospital that is truly able to care for him.

A New Chapter for Kit: Help Us Pave the Way for His Healing

After everything he has endured, our son Kit has shown us the true meaning of strength. Cognitively he is fully capable, which in ways, makes his suffering even more unbearable. Imagine being fully awake and aware while not being able to even blink your own eyelids, or breathe your own breaths. His journey has been one of incredible resilience, and our family has been held up by a community of unbelievable generosity. Thanks to you, in his earlier months we have raised $98,000, which carried us through the last 11 months as well as kept Kit insured, and covered the immense expense of moving him across the ocean- this is where we had to immediately find work opportunities to cover our living costs as the transfer nearly cost us everything.. we are now praying for a final, hopeful push to reach our $200,000 goal and give Kit the future he is fighting so hard for.

The goal is "100k for Kit by Christmas" With your help, we can build the ultimate gift for our son: a new chapter focused entirely on his healing. Where we can be with him through each day. By meeting this goal we can relocate to a more robust facility beyond the Kaiser network.

The Future We Are Building for Kit

Our vision is clear. To unlock Kit's full potential, we need to create the perfect environment for him to thrive. This means two crucial things: having his parents by his side 24/7, and having access to the best medical opportunities available.

The Power of Presence: We know that the most powerful medicine for Kit is our constant love and advocacy. Our goal is to finally step away from work to provide the uninterrupted presence he needs. There are days where he does not get held, and barely gets quality visit time. This is the single most important key to unlocking his recovery, allowing us to be his full-time caregivers and advocates, ensuring he is safe, loved, and making progress every single day.

Expanding His Horizons: Reaching our goal will give us the freedom to leave the Kaiser network and get Kit to a specialized children's hospital that is truly equipped to handle his care. After the MRSA infection and learning of this hospital's inexperience, it is clearer than ever that we must move towards a place with world-class specialists and a real plan for his future. Rather than the current method of watch and wait.

What Your Support Will Create

Joining us in supporting "100k for Kit by Christmas" will turn this vision into a reality. Your investment matters, and your sharing with others matters. The greatest gifts have come from complete strangers that just FEEL Kit and his loving heart.

Your contribution is a direct investment into a future where:

Kit has his parents' undivided attention, which is the foundation for his healing and safety.

Our family has the freedom to choose the absolute best care for Kit, transferring him to a top-tier children's hospital.

Our entire family can finally heal together. This journey has been traumatic for all of us, including Kit's 5-year-old sister. Your support will provide the resources for specialist care and therapies that will help our whole family mend and grow stronger. It’s not something we love to talk about, but the MRSA has spread to our family, and intervention therapies must be acquired to eliminate this nightmare from our lives, for all of our better health.

We are so close to building this future for our son. We see the finish line, and we know that with your help, we can get there. Every share and every donation, no matter the size, builds the bridge to Kit's new chapter.

Let's rally together and give Kit the greatest gift of all this Christmas: the chance to finally heal in a place that is safe and competent.

Thank you for being a part of our story. We are endlessly grateful.

-Kit's mom, dad & sisters