Brain Surgery Fundraiser, Amanda Birth Doula DMV

Hi, my name is Elizabeth Oldham and I have started this fundraiser to support Amanda Hoyle, a fabulous doula within the DMV community. Several years ago Amanda started to experience alarming symptoms such as debilitating headaches, and difficulties with speech/memory. After a few years of no answers, she was diagnosed with Arnold-Chiari Malformation. After the diagnosis, her symptoms began to increase with lost reflexes and some loss of body functions on one side of her body. Amanda will be navigating life and body-saving brain and spinal cord surgery in September to correct a herniated brain stem and explore a syrynx on her spinal cord caused by Arnold-Chiari Malformation. The syrynx is not removable given the location, the hope is that the decompression will allow her cerebral spinal fluid to regulate and the syrynx to shrink. For the syrynx on her spinal cord, our specific request is prayers and healing energy for this to shrink, no amount of money can fix it. If this does not happen Amanda could potentially continue to lose bodily functions.

For the past 5 years, Amanda has graciously and passionately served the birthing communities of California and the DC area as a self-employed birth and postpartum doula. Alongside this she has worked tirelessly at her first job, being a mother of 3 (now) teens. As we all know self-employed individuals and primary parents in a military family often can't take long chunks of time off of work. With a life-saving, major surgery and long-term recovery anticipated this can be extremely daunting, bringing undue stress and worry. I hope that we can raise enough money to give Amanda a cushion to fully recover before going back to such a mentally and physically hard job and to take additional time off if needed post-op. Her anticipated recovery time will be at least 6 weeks, but we will know more after surgery.

If you feel compelled to support Amanda through this journey please know that we are incredibly grateful and that even $1 will help. All donations will go directly to Amanda and used to pay medical bills and support her family.

On behalf of her work family, friends and family, we thank you for your emotional and/or financial support.

Elizabeth