Brandi lusk and family's emergency financial fund
Donation protected
My name is Dylan Garcia and I am currently trying to support my 3 kids with the help of my fiancé Jessica Lusk. We have a 6 year old son named Elijah, a 5 year old daughter named Isabella, and 3 year old daughter named Brandi. Brandi was born with an extremely rare terminal illness in which there are only about 30 cases reported in the entire world. Brandi's terminal illness is called Carnitine AcylCarnitine Translocase Deficiency, also known as CACT. People with CACT are unable to breakdown fats into energy in which is needed for the body to function causing the unused fatty acids to build up in her body. Children with this normally do not make it past infancy! With that being said, Brandi, died on her mother's chest at approximately 15 hours after birth which resulted in many nurse's and doctors performing CPR. lt took over an hour to bring her back to life. As a result Brandi has severe brain damage, seizures, and a compromised immune system along with other complications. Jessica and I spent 2 unbearably long months having to see Brandi stuck on life support while doctors ran tests and treated her for liver failure with dialysis. At 62 days old after multiple brain scans and tests, we got an official diagnosis. Doctors told us that she was not expected to live longer than a month. The doctors pressured us to remove her from life support immediately and stated that she would be a burden on us if we kept her on life support for the rest of her life in a vegetative state being that we have 2 healthy kids at home. We decided to remove life support as we did not want her to live in pain. Once life support was removed she did not die, instead she only required oxygen. By some miracle she was able to breath completely on her own and oxygen was removed! She slowly got better over the next month and we were told that it would now be safe to take her home on the condition she was placed on hospice. Although she had recovered enough to leave the hospital she was still far from being healthy. Luckily Medicaid not only provided the medications and equipment they also paid for private duty nursing to help us take care of her at home. Not only does she have a strict diet due to her condition making it impossible for her to process high-chained fat, she will never recover from forcing her to be fed through a G-Tube for the rest of her life. She also needs many different medications given multiple times daily to help her body function correctly and with massive brain damage we were told that even if she doesn't die that they are not sure if she would be able to even walk, talk, move, or do anything at all. Finally, after 3 years she is actually learning to walk and speak a few words. We know her condition will never go away and she will never be completely normal and with the possibility of her body shutting down again always in the back of our mind we were hopeful thinking that things would be ok. Now everything's gone back to the way it was before with us being in constant fear of losing her to covid19. We stay in Dallas wich is not only a city crowded with people but it's also one of the worlds highest covid19 cases. With Brandi's condition and weak immune system it's not only easier for her to get sick but it's also more fatal because her body would be to weak to fight off the virus if exposed. Due to the fear of her getting sick again my fiancè and I have had to quit our jobs, put our older kids in homeschool and are prisoners in our own home. We had hoped this covid19 situation would pass or atleast get better but it hasn't and we now owe thousands in debt and will be evicted by January 1, 2021 if we can't come up with the money owed. With Brandi's condition it will be impossible for us to go to a homeless shelter as it's a major risk to her safety & we have nowhere to go to. While many people are going around shopping for Christmas things we are trying to find a way to keep our kid safe & pay our bills that continue to accumulate.
Organizer and beneficiary
Dylan Garcia
Organizer
Dallas, TX
Jessica Lusk
Beneficiary