Thank You

Thank you to all for supporting Sweets for Hannah. We had a successful bake sale at Wal-mart on Saturday where we raised over $900. We baked about 90 dozen cookies for the event, which was extremely exhausting, but well worth it. We sold almost everything except for some snicker doodle cookies (which are Ricky's favorite).

Between the two fundraising sources we were able to raise a lot more money than we had ever expected, $2,700 in total. We will treat this money with great respect and appreciation and we will make sure that it will be used for its intended purpose.

One thing that is critical when caring for a child like Hannah is that parents need to be proactive instead of reactive. We have already seen a huge improvement in her overall health because of our efforts. Her vision is a great example of why we need to be proactive. She has one weaker eye that use to wander a bit, but because we noticed it and worked with her ophthalmologist we were able to correct this potential impairment with daily eye patching of the stronger eye. Her balance (vestibular dysfunction) is much more complicated, and it will take a lot more work to help her live with no sense of balance. Because we learned about her vestibular dysfunction early on we have been able to start early with certain therapies to help her walk and cope with this impairment. If we can manage these two impairments properly then her abilities to learn and receive a normal education will be extremely high. Many people hear the word “syndrome” and correlate mental development issues, but that is not the case with CHARGE and that is why we are working so hard with Hannah in these early years. We have no doubt as parents that she will surpass all other expectation and have a higher than average learning ability.

CHARGE Syndrome affects each CHARGEr differently and has numerous possible physical and health disabilities that accompany the syndrome. Some of the funds will help us attend the International CHARGE Syndrome Conference. This conference brings together many of the professionals that research and work with CHARGE Syndrome to teach parents about the advances that have happened over the last two years. This is still a fairly new syndrome and there is a lot happening in the field of CHARGE. It wasn’t diagnosed as a syndrome until 2004 when they discovered a gene that plays a major role in why many of the symptoms of CHARGE occur in a child.

You have made a great difference in Hannah’s life! We feel so grateful and overwhelmed by the generosity and love from others!
Thank you!

With much love,
Ricky, Samantha, Caleb, & Hannah :)