Elysse Denning
As writen by Elysse's mother:
Our little girl’s name is Elysse Christine Denning. She was
born November 28, 2001. Everything was perfect, and pink. My husband
and I were thrilled to find out we were having a girl. I cried for
excitement, he for fear of her one day dating… My pregnancy
was normal but she was a very large baby. Her delivery started out
pretty uneventful, not even that painful, just exciting for us. Then
I started to feel a pain that just didn’t feel “natural”.
It felt like my hips were breaking and I knew something was wrong.
I begged the doctor to give me a c-section because I was not feeling
“normal” (I was a first time mom and I still knew it!).
Unfortunately, my doctor didn’t believe me and told me to just
push. I pushed so hard I couldn’t breathe, but finally she was
born. The nurse congratulated me, but then all the excitement turned
to chaos. My little girl was born blue and floppy; she would not cry
or move. I remember just crying hysterically into the hallway for
a “baby doctor”. Finally, after what seemed like hours
a team of nurses came in and got her to breathe. Then they took her
away to the NICU. I had to finish with my delivery, and they told
my husband to stay with me. She was born at 3:16 PM and at around
6:30PM the doctor finally came up to our room to tell us about our
baby. Being naïve, I didn’t expect to hear what we did.
Our baby, if she lived, would most likely be blind, deaf and severely
brain injured. The term “vegetable” was used to describe
our little girl. Things like this don’t happen to healthy women,
who have dreamed of this day her whole life, they just didn’t,
right? Well, we were told to baptize our baby girl because she would
most likely die before the next morning. I hadn’t even seen
her yet. We called our Bishop to help us pray for her and to bless
her with love and strength that we knew she would need.
It’s been four years and we are still praying for her, but have also found a therapy that seems to work MIRACLES as well. Intense Physical Therapy like what is offered at Therapies 4 Kids. We traveled to a similar therapy in Michigan and we saw our little girl start to do things we thought were years out if we were lucky. That was just a two week program with NO Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. We then learned that we didn’t have to travel so far because we had a therapy here in Florida, so we were very excited. We’ve always wanted to do the hyperbaric chambers, but never thought we could afford it on top of her intense PT. Now there’s hope. We have just hosted the biggest yard sale ever. It took over four yards and three full days just to sell all the stuff we collected in the community. We have covered some expenses for our family to go to south Florida for three weeks, but we need help to cover our Intensive Pediatric Therapy and the Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. Elysse is now four. She can see and she hears EVERYTHING, we have to spell a whole lot in our home. She is very intelligent, but she can not speak. She can move all her extremities, but she is not able to hold her head up so she can not sit or stand. We have come so far. Our little girl has so much hope, it’s so hard when our happy little princess cries herself to sleep and she can’t even tell you why, even though we know. She wants to run and talk. We wish everyone could meet her because everyone who has starts to really see what faith is about. They can see true love in her eyes and hear it in her giggles. We hope you can help.
Thank you,
Elysse’s Mom, Dawn
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