valerie detrick

On October 7th 2016 
My daughter Valerie Lenore Detrick was born, she was born with downsyndrome and a moderate size hole in her heart called ventricular septal defect (VSD) which is causing the pressure on the right side of her heart to be less than the left (normal) blood goes left-right across the hole and because of the hole this pushes extra blood to the lungs making them "wet" and breathing gets harder over time. Because of this her heart is working much harder then normal causing her to burn calories a lot faster, so she needs to eat a lot of extra calories to compensate for her accelerated heart rate, she still fits into all her 3month  clothes because she doesn't grow due to the lack of blood being reserculated to the rest of her body, all the blood going to her lungs makes it hard for her breath and makes her prone to other illnesses like pneumonia, despite all these challenges she still manages to wake up every morning happy as can be, she is such a strong, gorgeous, happy an loving baby girl she never seizes to amaze me. On October 3rd 2017 she will be having surgery to close the hole in her heart. She will be recovering from surgery in the hospital for 6-7weeks depending on how fast or slow she recovers. Once we bring her home she will be recovering another 6months, its not uncommon for the hole to re-open or another hole to open up in a different place making it necessary to have as many as 6 follow up surgerys. Her mother and I both want and need to be with her as much as possible, Carly is going to take off the whole month of October and whenever else she can so the rest of the time I will have Valerie. Carly and I live from paycheck to paycheck, we have a hard enough time trying to stay on top of the bills every month, providing our four kids with everything that they need, the gas to get them where they need to go and back, not to mention we only have one car so the whole time Valerie is in the hospital we will be driving from Mount Vernon to Seattle Children's Hospital I'm sure numerous times a day so shes never alone and back to the house before the older boys get home from school, all the doctors appointmens once she comes home and also the medication for her after the surgery, she's going to be recovering during the coldest part of the year also during a few birthdays an holidays. For the next 6 1/2 - 7 months with Carly an I not working as much everything is going to get a hell of a lot harder, I'd be lying if I said that we aren't already above and beyond overwhelmed and so damn stressed out with everything else we have on our plate and now with thought of our beautiful baby girl going under an having open heart surgery four days before her first birthday makes us sad, scared and more nervous than you could imagine. 

We need all of the help love and support we can get right now, any/everything helps believe me when I say that I know and 100% understand that we all have our own struggles an hard ship. So if you can't give much or even nothing at all just please please please keep my daughter in your thoughts and prayers. Thank you all so much for taking the time out of your day to read this I appreciate it more than you could ever imagine.