Addison Messer

Addison was born with many issues related to her mother having Hyperemesis Gravidarum that was not treated well. They are calling her over all condition Vitamin K Embryopathy, a condition that hardly anyone else has so we deal with her issues as they come up. Meaning a ton of driving and advocating for treatments. She was born with out a nose bone and her sinuses not shaped correctly, spinal defects, hearing loss, heart defects (minor but they are there) feeding and growing issues as well as ventricumegaly (like hydrocephalus but not needing treatment currently) and white matter loss in her brain. leading to a CP diagnosis. Addison has had 22 surgeries in her 6 years of life, 8 of them on her spine 2 on her brain.

she is cognitively very normal but needs a wheelchair to get around if she can’t crawl. So when we are out of our house she is in a wheelchair 99.9% of the time. This is working well for her but as she gains weight and grows its getting harder and harder to get her safely into and out of our current van. Her body has high tone so she does not bend well so we have to be careful not to hit her head when lifting her into her carseat, and fitting her wheelchair into the back of the van is not going to be a choice when we have to size up her chair in the next few months and it means she can not have an electric chair as we have no way to transport it.

Her mom was also effected by the pergancy and struggles with balance and controlling her body when lifting so over time caring for Addie is getting harder and harder. Its gotten to the point that we avoid taking Addison into the community because of the work and toll on mom. Currently her back and knees are feeling the brunt of the lifting. Mom has had Knee surgery in the past and now the knee is acting up and the knee cap dislocated from being hit by the wheelchair when mom was lifting it into the van. This has not happened in years because of the surgery and we can’t risk mom not being able to care for the kids if she were to get hurt.

Our family is working on getting a full sized van modified for Addison because we are working on doing foster care and adding extra kiddos into a wheelchair modified van is not going to work. Foster care has been something mom always wanted to do but after our adventures with Addison we have seen first hand the kids with medical complexities being left at the hospital when their families, for many reasons, make the choice to leave them there. We want to use what we have learned and help other kids. But having a van that can hold everyone is so important to this mission. We want to be able to take the kids to the zoo, or park, but most importantly on trips to doctors and therapies or school. We need a van that will hold everyone and not hurt mom more so she can keep caring for Addison, her brother and sister and any possible future foster children (the plan is to do medically complex kids)

we hate asking and asking for help but we will not be able to do this van on our own. So we have made the choice to work with Help Hope Live because they do a lot to help make this easier on us, like sending out tax dedution paperwork, as well as keeping track of the money. Money donated to this platform can only be used for the medical need and can not be used for anything else.

We thank you for reading a little bit of our story and wanting to help our family! it means so much to us and we are so blessed to be in a spot that this is something we are doing!