On Easter Sunday, Avalee, our 14 year old daughter went to bed with an ache in her lower back and woke up the next morning with intense leg pain and eventually lost the ability to move her legs and feet. She had a stroke in her lower spine (very rare) and is paralyzed from the belly button down and has only limited sensation in her lower extremities. We started off being air lifted from Arkansas Children’s Northwest to Children’s hospital in Little Rock were she stayed for 34 days before being transported on an airplane ambulance on May 24th to Chicago at Shirley Ryan Ability Lab rehab hospital with a world class pediatric spinal injury rehab program…where we currently still are in the in-patient program.
Many people have reached out asking to help cover costs associated with Avalee’s rehabilitation program to gain as much function back as possible and walk again. After several ambulance rides, a helicopter transport and an airplane ambulance flight… and 50 days and counting in a hospital things have added up. We are also nearing our limit for PT and OT benefits covered by insurance. Once we return to Northwest Arkansas, many accessibility modifications must be made to our homes as well as equipment purchases.
Avalee has already made significant progress here at Shirley Ryan with many leg muscle groups waking up. She has been working incredibly hard here with 4-6 sessions per day. In addition to waking up one morning and not being able to move her legs, Avalee had to miss most of the end of the year school activities privileged to only graduating 8th graders (class trip to Washington DC, track championship, field day, graduation parties and the student vs. teachers basketball game) that she had been looking forward to since kindergarten. She really misses her friends and family. It’s been a rough couple of months, but we are blessed to have so many family and friends to support and pray for us.
Thank you for everything!
Luke and Anna
