DENIS DIZDAR
Denis is a sweet, good-natured little boy who lives in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He was born with a rare form of infant epilepsy which has left him severely impaired. At five years old, Denis cannot yet sit, walk or speak. Nevertheless, he is a happy child who laughs often, gives lots of kisses and loves to be around other children. Denis' favorite things to do are listen to music (and other funny sounds), swing in his hammock and be cuddled. He does more therapy each day than any child should have to but still manages to maintain his sunny disposition!
Denis has been hospitalized many times and has taken many medications to try and control his seizures. For the last two years, he has been seizure-free on the ketogenic diet--something we are very grateful for.
Unfortunately, there are very few therapeutic resources where Denis lives. He must travel outside the country for all his medical care and therapies. Mom and Dad learn everything they can and then try to pass on the knowledge to Denis' local therapists (who were mostly trained in sports therapy). This ends up being quite expensive but is necessary if Denis is to have any hope of progress.
Last year, Denis did intensive suit therapy for the first time. Everyone was excited about his progress. Denis gained improved head control and began to roll with minimum assistance. These were more accomplishments than Denis had made in his previous 4 years. This year, we are hoping to be able to take Denis for intensive suit therapy again. We would like to combine it with HBOT to see if that will increase his progress. We would love to see Denis gain more head and trunk control so that he could sit by himself and be able to go out and do more things with our family.
I hope that the above is suitable for your website. Let me know if you need something else. We really appreciate any help we can get for Denis to be able to do the HBOT and intensive suit therapy. Thank you very much for your work to help our kids!
Best regards,
Kasey Vannett
