Description
Hi, my name is Shawna Mills and I am currently staying with my husband Hunter and our daughter Sylvie in the hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock while 8 month old Sylvie fights for her life against a 5cm tumor on her brain causing cerebral fluid blockages and visual and hormonal complications. We are running a facebook group with donated items for auction to help raise money for expenses as well. There are a lot of great items and services being auctioned on the “Squishstrong – here for Sylvie” facebook group if you would like to check it out.
The question has come up as to what exactly we are fundraising for. We do have state insurance which is so far covering all of Sylvie’s medical expenses however we have no idea to what extent it is going to cover especially now that we are looking at chemotherapy. We are also fundraising for travel, food, time out of work, our 8 horses feed and care costs, bills (phone, rent, insurance payments, and other monthly expenses) and anything that may pop up that we werent expecting difficulty paying for such as after care when Sylvie comes home.
Thankfully room and board is not part of the costs we need to worry about as we are able to stay right in the room with her and for that we are eternally grateful as this is one thing we will not have to deal with.
A little more about Sylvie and her medical diagnosis: she is still waiting for a definitive tumor type identification but she does have a 5cm tumor pressing on optical nerves and her pituitary gland as well as her delicate brain tissue and structures. As of today the game plan is to do a biopsy as all other non-invasive options have been exhausted and none of the tumor markers have been identified. So we will be going in for biopsy on monday morning and those results will tell us what kind of tumor we are dealing with and exactly how it is we are going to remove it. Tentatively, it looks like chemotherapy (not radiation) to shrink the tumor down so the surgeon can see where her optical nerves are so a treatment plan can be made. In the best case scenario we can use chemotherapy and/or medication to remove the tumor without surgery and that is the scenario we are all praying for. But we wont know until the biopsy is done. It is a lot of wait and see at this point. But the neurosurgeon is very optimistic for the imaging we have for this plan of action so we are praying for this outcome so Sylvie can be healed from this monster and return home to resume normal barn baby life.