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Hey all.....

Kinda figured some people might need a brief background as to what's been going on to keep Allison in the hospital for so long, so here goes. As most of you might already know, Allison was born with Cerebral Palsy and another birth defect that affects her joints, tendons and some other things. 1 of those other things was a cleft upper palate in her mouth. We started on Oct 17th with an elective surgery to repair Allisons palate which was not formed correctly. The pro's to this surgery were supposed to be increased ability to manage food so she could start eating by mouth and also assistance with word formation. That was scheduled to be a day surgery with an overnight stay for observation. Allison began having some pretty serious breathing difficulties after the surgery and ended up with aspiration pneumonia and was rushed to the ICU and was there for 3 1/2 days on a respirator. After spending a total of 12 days recovering we were sent home. Just a few days later Allison started bleeding from somewhere into her stomach and she got really sick. We were admitted back to Doernbecher and have been there off and on since. The Dr's have finally narrowed down the cause of the bleeding and have scheduled surgery to repair it. The hope is that we will be able to bring her home sometime before Christmas.
Thank you all again so much for your thoughts and prayers.

Jeff