Help mark get his surgery (ABI)

Some people don’t believe in heroes but they haven’t met my son. Our little superhero, Mark Braster lll has multiple health conditions that hes been fighting since the day he was born. He has a 7th nerve facial palsy on the right side of his face, which made it difficult for him to eat and causing him not to gain weight, so they placed a feeding tube on him called a GJ TUBE he’s on that continuously for 22 hours a day. Mark also gets corneal ulcers in both of his eyes which later when he’s about 4 years old might need a corneal transplant in his right eye. He’s also way behind in crawling and walking but he’s going to get there real soon. Now the reason for the go fund me is that Mark has loss of hearing in both of his ears, which he tried using hearing aids. After 6 months of trying the hearing aids his hearing did not improve. So we went down to Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis,Indiana where he sees all his doctors. So, they said the next step was to try a Cochlear Implant and to get a MRI to see if he has any nerves in his ears. We got the results back and he has no nerve at all in his right ear and very little working nerve in the left ear. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to get the cochlear implant because you have to have a working nerve and the left side wasn’t strong enough after we took multiple hearing test. The final step we had is getting an ABI (auditory brainstem implant) so his doctors sent us to Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Auditory brainstem implant is a small device that is surgically implanted in the brain of a deaf person whose auditory nerves are lacking or damaged. The auditory nerves conduct the sound signals from the ear to the brain. After the surgery is successful Mark will hopefully deliver a clear enough signal so he can understand some spoken language and subsequently develop his own speech. Marks chance of obtaining spoken language without an without an ABI are very slim, they said it’s difficult to provide an accurate estimate but Marks chances of learning to talk (at least some) are slightly better than, 50% with a well functioning ABI. These are certainly much lower numbers than what would be expected with a cochlear implant. Us as his parents want this surgery for our sweet baby boy to be able to speak to us and hear our voices. His insurance is only going to cover the device itself and not the surgery. Thank you for taking your time to read about our sons little journey. After everything he’s been going through also 2 years he’s the strongest and happiness baby I’ve ever seen. I believe that God sent you into my life to give me something to fight for, to show me there is a love in this world, to give me hope and bring me joy, all the proof in God I need is you, you are a gift from the heavens.