The Give Hope Foundation has been an incredible resource for our family since we discovered our three-year-old, Reagan, required a kidney transplant. Their generosity and kindness helped our family relieve some of the financial burdens that our new child's extensive medical complications placed on us.
Reagan was diagnosed with end-stage renal disease while still in the womb. Shortly after birth, Reagan was immediately placed on peritoneal dialysis for an average of fourteen hours per day, seven days a week. We remained at Stanford's Children's Hospital for nearly the entire first year of Reagan's life.
As a middle school teacher, I had to leave my profession to tend to my daughter's dialysis care, leaving us as a single income household. Shortly after returning home, I broke my leg, and soon after that, my husband's appendix had to be removed. We were alternating taking over Reagan's primary care as a team.
Our family experienced unexpected complications and expenses as Reagan had an emergency care flight (one of two flights) from Reno to Stanford Children's Hospital in Palo Alto, California, for an abdominal hernia in October of 2017. Reagan was just two-years-old.
A couple of months later, she received an open hip reduction surgery that used bone from a donor to rebuild her hip socket. This additional medical issue resulted from her kidney failure. The lack of functioning kidneys left her with little to no amniotic fluid, causing her hip to develop out of place.
Finally, on January 5, 2020, Reagan received her gift of life from the donor list. In her early twenties, a young woman had passed away and saved Reagan's life by her heroic actions by choosing to be an organ donor.
We again found ourselves in the country's most expensive zip code, trying to find safe lodging as close to the hospital as possible. At the same time, we waited on the lengthy list of those in need of temporary housing provided by the hospital or the Ronald McDonald House. The Give Hope Foundation generously provided our family with the financial assistance needed to find safe and clean enough lodging for a three-year-old with a fresh transplant to recover comfortably.
The Give Hope Foundation has been such a blessing in every way. Everyone affiliated has been very genuine and kind. They assist so many families and have done so much for our community. They helped alleviate a tremendous amount of stress from a situation that no amount of planning could have adequately prepared us for. We are so grateful to them and can only hope to pay it forward someday.