The Brockway Family

My name is Samantha Brockway and I live in Wisconsin with my husband Robert and our wonderful 7 month old daughter, Isla. We are seeking financial assistance to help our family cope with medical bills, travel expenses, and bills that have been piling up over the past couple months. 

Around 2 months old, Isla started to have difficulty feeding and gaining weight. She fell from the 19th percentile, to the 6th, and was considered failure to thrive around 4 months. Isla has been admitted to Children’s Hospital six times since she was two months old; staying in the hospital for over 60 days. In addition to difficulty feeding and gaining weight, Isla was also diagnosed with high blood pressure and put on medication around 3 months old. She has seen multiple specialists in GI, Rumetology, Renal, Genealogy and ENT and has had many invasive tests to figure out what has been going on with her. She got to the point where the GI doctor had to place an NG tube for feeding around her 4th month. When the NG tube failed when she was 5 months old (she kept vomiting everything she ate) Isla had an NJ tube placed and surgery was then brought in on her case.

On June 28th, 2019, Isla underwent surgery to removed adhesions around her intestines and to place a GJ feeding tube. She was then readmitted twice after her surgery; each time Isla was readmitted 24 hours after each discharge. The first time she was readmitted was because her jejunum tube had moved out of place, causing her to vomit all her feeds and become dehydrated. The second time she was readmitted, it was for an infection that caused her to be seriously dehydrated and malnourished. We were finally discharged and officially sent home on July 11th, 2019.

Now, she is slowly learning to eat more by mouth, but still requires regular feeding through her GJ and a lot of hands on care. Because of this, I have had to take off of work until further notice to become her full time caregiver. She is also still struggling with her high blood pressure to the point where they are looking into genetics for possible leads. Her care is still ongoing, and we have to take at least three to four trips down a month to Children’s Hospital for follow up appointments; four hour drives both down and back which both are a burden in gas and mileage on our vehicles. If Isla does not improve in a timely matter, there has been talk about possibilities of more procedures and invasive tests in the future for her, though my husband and I pray it does not come to that. 

We are overwhelmed with medical bills, not to mention travel expenses and keeping up with monthly bills and living expenses. We are asking for all the help we can get. Isla is the strongest, smartest, most amazing little girl we know and has gained a lot of progress. However, the reality of our situation is that she still has a lot of unanswered questions about her medical issues. It will be a long road, and we are grateful to have any help we can get. Thank you.