The Fischer Family

Scroll down to see updates as the Fischer family progresses in their CDH Journey! (All updates are written and given by parents with consent)

Update 8/2

Our baby, Daanya, nearly 14 months old, has been in the hospital for her whole life with the exception of just three and a half short weeks.  Although CDH is her only diagnosis, she was also born premature (at 30 weeks), only adding to her health issues. Her unique anatomy has lent further complications, which is why she has been in the hospital for so long. She had her initial CDH repair at our "home" hospital and was transferred to a higher level of care 2,500 miles away around 5 months old.  In total, she has had 6 big surgeries, including her initial CDH repair, a revision, Nissen Fundoplication, G-Tube, pyloroplasty and hiatal hernia repair.  Each surgery has taken incrementally longer than the last and she has been the toughest little girl through them all.  We are so proud of how far she has come and we know she has further to go, but we are hopeful she will continue to beat the odds.  The most recent surgery revealed that her patch (standing in for her left diaphragm) contains a bacterial infection.  We are now faced with at least 5 more weeks in the hospital to finish the round of antibiotics.  At this point, we pray that is it and she will finally be discharged once and for all because Daanya has never been home.  Mom has been by her side since the transfer and hasn't been home either.  Dad has to travel back and forth for work, which is very hard for everyone. That being said, we are grateful to be receiving the ECCF grant.  The funds will go toward dad's visits and help to ease the burden of that expense.

Update 8/3

She had her big surgery on July 14 and while they were in there, they confirmed her gore-tex patch contains a bacterial infection. Of course we didn’t find out until almost a week later and we had to decide whether to operate AGAIN (which would only be a temporary patch to later put in a new one) or try and treat with antibiotics. Neither choice was a guarantee but we opted for the antibiotics to try and avoid surgery. It’s possible we will have to do more surgeries even so, but we know the antibiotics require at least 5 more weeks of treatment (inpatient). 

Update 10/2

Daanya has been discharged and the family has been sent home!