Monday May 20, 2019

Hey everyone,

The last month has been going really well here. Ava’s abdominal incision is all healed up, all the stitches are finally dissolved. Her bum is also finally healed 🤗. It took till 2 weeks ago ..believe it or not. But man oh man is it nice to just use “wipes” and simply “wipe her bum” instead of all the interventions we had to do. The changing table has become way more positive for Ava. No more distractions needed for procedures. This has been a nice change for our family.

She had a follow up with her pediatrician this week and it went good. She is happy with how things healed up and her consistency in her bowel movements. We will continue to monitor her diet and laxative dosing as she grows. We still don’t need to do dilations right now which is a blessing🙏🏼. Will be more challenging to do it as Ava gets older with fighting it. We see her pediatrician in a few weeks and occupational therapy at the end of the month.

We had a busy month of outings and travelling. This is honestly new for us.. we have never taken Ava to a hotel setting before. We went to jasper during Easter which Ava did really well. We also went up to our home town spirit river to visit family. A normal thought process for us is “what if she gets sick? Do we have everything in our medical bag? Where’s the nearest hospital if we needed?”. It is a slow process changing our thinking patterns, we have needed help from our therapists with this from the trauma and negative situations we have faced. Ava did really well those weekends. So fortunate as Landon and I needed those positive steps to happen.

We are so thankful for everyone who joined “Ava’s Army” and came to participate in the Stollery Teddy bear fun run May 11. We had 70 people join us in the 5 km walk and raised $4446. Landon and I were overwhelmed with the support. It meant the world to us having Ava walk across the finish line with everyone cheering for our little “warrior”. It was such a wonderful day, thank you from the bottom of our hearts ❤️.

Lastly I have to share how we finally were able to take Ava swimming for the first time! 🤗 she loved it. It was so much fun, something we have been looking forward to in a while ❤️. Will keep in touch Ava’s progress. 👍 we can’t thank enough to everyone for the continuous support of Ava❤️

#avasarmy