children

There are so many wonderful entries and so many deserving people wanting to go away on vacation. So why pick me? My name is Andriani and a am a mother of two wonderful kids. On December 29th 2006 I got diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, at that time I have a two month old and a 4 year old and life was hectic. Since then life has been a giant roller coaster with my Multiple Sclerosis, and it's been non stop, but having a wonderful supporting family helps. Between the extra curricular activities, the volunteering and no time for me I am hoping you pick me.

Why I feel that I deserve a vacation is because I really need to get away with my family and create wonderful memories that my children will cherish for there rest of their lives, plus relaxation will do me some good. Plus not being able to have a honeymoon well that says it all,I guess between working and trying to save money we found love more important then being able to go on a honeymoon, yet our love still blossomed.

I just feel that life is an adventure and we are out to discover it, life is after all to short but with people being there every obstacle is minute and triumph is attainable. I just want to be able to hold my kids hands and play in the white sandy beaches of Roatan, hey maybe even learn how to scuba dive.

Thank you

Andriani

We began this journey three years ago when our new home in Kentucky burned to the ground with everything in it.  We searched for jobs and got offers, but some turned out to be illegitimate.  A year ago, we left the island of Kauai where one of our employers failed to provide for us as promised, just as the recession began to take hold.  We got off the island by spending everything we had.  I got offered a job in San Jose, CA, at a wonderful company.  I lived in my car, while I began my new job, and my family stayed 600 miles away with friends.  No one knew how desperate we were.  In August of last year, I finally got them to San Jose, along with our pets, without any furniture.  We slept on the floors for months.  We would drive the streets each weekend looking for discarded furniture, and drag it back to our rental home.  My wife got a job as a photographer.  Everything seemed to be going good, and we were finally starting to pay down bills, when she hurt her knee at work.  This led to surgery (the first) on her knee.  Eventually, she went back to work at Christmas, but we were so behind on bills we could not provide a Christmas for our kids.  We lost a vehicle to repossession.  My wife had a second accident at work and reinjured her knee and herniated a lower back disc.  She had back surgery, and she has been out of work ever since.  We live each week by picking fruit in neighborhood yards, eating hotdogs and chicken suppers and attending every free event we can find.  We have puppies we love, birds we cuddle and a good family relationship.  As I write this, I have $0 in my pocket, and I can't remember what it feels like to have money in my pocket.  I hold my beautiful wife and my children and I can't give them anything but existence, and I am sometimes sinking trying to do that. 

After four miscarriages, I gave birth to a beautiful son, Brody. The only problem was, unbeknownst to us until the moment of his birth, Brody has multiple congenital issues, summed up as the congenital Vacterl association. He is now almost 3, and after 12 surgeries (with more to follow) Brody is stable, but with all of our medical bills, we do not have the money for a vacation. Brody has traveled by plane for a lot of his surgeries, but we've never had an actual family vacation. We’d like to learn what it's like to be a family outside of a hospital! And, since Brody has spent more than half of his life in casts with pins in his arms, and unable to swim or splash in a pool or bathtub, we'd like a vacation with lots of water around us!

Our journey began in 2004 when my husband, Jeremy, and I decided to try to have family. I became pregnant quite easily, and then had a miscarriage. And another. And then I got pregnant again, and we saw a heartbeat. And then I had another miscarriage.  And another.

I got testing done. Ten vials of blood drawn from both Jeremy and me. Nothing was wrong, they said.

So we kept trying.

And then I found a brilliant doctor who diagnosed me with three separate autoimmune issues that four previous doctors had not detected. The problem was he lived in another state, and my health insurance would not pay for his treatments. But we did it anyway, using any spare dollar we could find.

It worked. I got pregnant and stayed pregnant. We decided not to learn the gender of our baby. My obgyn informed that our baby had 10 fingers, two kidneys, and was perfectly healthy.  I still have the ultrasound picture with his notations: “L kidney, R kidney.”

At around 31 weeks, I was hospitalized with severe preeclampsia. At 33 weeks, on September 1, 2006, I underwent a C-section. I still remember the moment the doctor said, “It’s a boy!”  I also then noticed that Jeremy was shaking. I saw why. Brody’s hands looked crooked and bent in.

During the next terrifying days, we did not know if Brody would live. We learned the words Vacterl association (our son's official diagnosis) and tracheoesophageal fistula (TEF) (his esophagus did not lead into his stomach). Brody had his first surgery at 2 days old, and his second at 6 days old. We learned that in addition to TEF, Brody has only one kidney, with reflux, hypospadias, bilateral radial club hands (no radius bones in his forearms and no thumbs), and craniosynostosis (a fused metopic suture in his skull). As of June 2009, Brody has had a total of 12 surgeries.

Brody is silly, loud, witty, and the love of our lives. Now we are paying off all of these medical bills and we have no money left for a vacation. Please help!