Nutritional Needs and Medical Bills for Ava Jo

Hello kind souls. My name is Jason and I'm setting this funding up for my beautiful daughter's needs nutritionally and her surmounting medical bills. We are hoping to get enough together initially to help with providing her with all of the specific nutritional items she will need due to her condition. She is having to go completely dairy, soy and gluten free. We would also like to get her probiotics, enzymes and vitamin supplements to fill any gaps in her diet. These changes and supplements can be very costly to get started on, and find what she likes and works best. With any remaining funds we would then hope to be able to take a chunk out of her medical bills.

Ava Jo is 6 years old and has had a tough go of it medically since before she was 2. I will do my best to summarize what she has gone through.

Just before she was about 2 we started noticing blood in her stool. We then started the journey of working with doctors to find out what was wrong. Through all the countless blood samples and poo samples we had very little to go on. We were able to rule out some of the bigger things, like cancer, which of course came as a relief. But, there wasn't any reason that the doctors could find for her continuous blood loss. This constant blood loss causes her to become severely anemic. This basically means she doesn't have the necessary iron levels in her blood to carry oxygen to the rest of her body. We started iron rich food, daily liquid iron doses (mixed with Hershey syrup, her special chocolate, that was still absolutely horrible tasting), and even changing to cooking everything in cast iron. With all this she would still get pale, fatigued and deficient. She would then need blood transfusions and iron infusions just to keep her levels up.

Through all of this we had been getting procedures done. Always getting blood checked. Upper and lower scopes of her digestive tract. Pill cameras that take pictures all the way through her system. But, still nothing that showed more than irritation of the bowel. At the end of our rope, we then found a surgeon we trusted and opted for exploratory surgery. He was then able to physically look over her entire intestinal tract for any abnormalities. And finally, he finds something! A Meckel's Diverticulum hiding on her small intestine. This is essentially a second stomach that can form as a birth defect. This second stomach had been producing stomach acid and had been continuously causing damage to her intestines. The Meckel's was then removed along with any damaged bowel tissue via a non invasive surgery shortly after. We thought our troubles were over!

She was not so lucky. The second stomach had already done its damage and she began to bleed again. Not so severely but enough to begin to bring her levels down slowly over time.

So here we are years later in the hospital again. This time called for 2 blood transfusions and an albumin infusion. After these, and the love of so many, she is feeling in much better spirits and health. In an attempt to find the cause of the bleed yet again, we have been working with the Gastroenterology doctors at St. Francis in Tulsa while she is here. They have done another upper and lower scope, and another pill camera. AND FINALLY AGAIN! We find something! She has visible ulcers on her large intestine and bowel. Something that has taken all these years of damage for it to show itself. It sounds horrible to be excited about bowel ulcers right? But this came as such a relief. Finally, its something that can be diagnosed and treated. There is no cure, but, with a dietary and supplement plan based on the food sensitivities and allergies she has formed in combination with medicine for inflammation of the bowel, it can be managed. She will have to be careful about her diet and be on medicine for the rest of her life, but her quality of life can now be restored. She can have the energy to be her beautiful, rambunctious little self and pester her brother and sisters for years to come!!

With this gofundme, we humbly ask you all to help start us on her new road to recovery, to her new healthy life.

Thank you all for your time, generosity and prayers.