Alison Solorio Lozada

This campaign is to raise funds for our baby Alison Solorio Lozada, who survived perinatal asphyxia and now has to live with Cerebral Palsy. This is her story, I appreciate you taking the time to read it...

    Smiling no matter what 

When you think of having a baby you instantly think about whether you’re going to have a boy or a girl, what you are going to name it, or who it is going to look like. You think about the money of course, and you want everything going perfect for the birth, and even if you worry, you never truly think of something going really wrong in that moment that should be all illusion and happiness. But something very unexpected did happened to us the day our baby girl was born. We never thought that the person we blindly trusted as our obstetrician would end up causing her such damage that she would have to fight for her life in the intensive care unit for 5 weeks, and later have to face severe and life altering consequences for the rest of her (brand new) life.

On July 22nd 2021 Alison was deprived of oxygen for nearly 2 hours as she was being born, the obstetrician never noticed until she was born blue, flaccid and her heart almost stopped. Thank God they were able to revive her and immediately take her to the neonatal ICU, her main diagnoses (among many others) being ischemic cardiopathy and hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy with epileptic status, in other words our brand newborn baby had just suffered a heart attack and a stroke.

Words are not enough to say that we were NOT prepared for this. It started a hell of hospitalizations, monitoring, studies, FEARS, and even with her dad and I being doctors, we did not have a clue of what to do or who to listen to when it came to decisions about our baby’s life and health. 

When it comes to our own children, I think that reasoning and whatever knowledge that you might have go completely out the window.

Besides all of that, on the first 48 hours after she was born our hospital bill went over $10,000 USD, that was way more than our life savings; we found ourselves with the painful decision of having to resort to the public health system in our country, and we had to “trust” an entity that not only lacks the material resources, but the HUMANITY to treat you with dignity, let alone any empathy…

We ended up with our baby being “kidnapped” in a public hospital where only ONE of her parents could be with her for 45 minutes a day, and where they flat out refused to listen to us, much less give us answers or explanations because “they are the experts and we could not understand”, and, where lazy bureaucracy reigns over everything.

Thank God, Alison’s little heart quickly recovered, but the hypoxemia caused irreversible brain damage, with her developing cerebral palsy and epilepsy. 

She needed to be intubated and on a ventilator, and that meant that she obviously couldn’t eat anything. It was until she was 12 days old that she was able to try food for the first time (although it was through a NG tube), and the new complications began…

Every time she ate she vomited, in addition to having reflux (which is very common in babies), but they automatically resorted to more drugs and more invasive studies in our newborn, studies that months later we would find out they didn't even know how to interpret correctly; and they began to take increasingly aggressive measures to fight her vomiting, excusing themselves in Alison’s neurological condition, and repeatedly refusing us the possibility of trying other less invasive measures because that would have required our presence with her beyond those measly 45 minutes every 48 hours, (since her father and I alternated days to enter).

And so, we were bullied (although we didn't see it at the time) into accepting various procedures without being able to ask for second opinions because we “threatened her life” by waiting, and because they made it clear that if we sought out a second opinion elsewhere we would not be guaranteed that they would continue to treat her!

Finding ourselves so suddenly bankrupted, we didn’t have the option to take her to another hospital. So, at 18 days old, we made the mistake of trusting the so-called “specialists” and agreed to submit our baby to major surgery so that she could finally be discharged and brought home. That was the only option they offered us: Close her esophagus and place a gastrostomy tube, or keep her hospitalized “until she became infected and died of sepsis.” And no, I am not being dramatic, that’s a quote from the HEAD OF THE NICU when we expressed our doubts about the need for such surgery without having tried other options first. That is why above I refer to her as being “kidnapped” in the hospital.

Perhaps it’s easy to look back or see it from the outside, and think: but why didn’t they take her away? Why didn’t they insist? it was after all their daughter... But we DID insist!!! We knocked on all the doors, we looked for alternatives, we talked to every specialist we knew… But all we accomplished was to be labeled as difficult and conflictive parents…

At the same time our mental state was definitely not the best… new parents, stressed, worried and overwhelmed, the life of our baby at stake, postpartum hormones fluctuating, and a false belief that we could trust doctors because they were the “experts”, forgetting that patients in public hospitals here are not seen as people… they are meat, numbers, organs, and opportunities to practice big surgeries and procedures. Not humans in pain, with families that are also suffering.

The result was a surgery that we would soon learn she never needed; but the worst part is that it only brought her more problems with eating, and complications such as esophageal dilation, constant abdominal pain, and on top of it she continued with reflux and vomiting.

To resolve these subsequent complications, my baby has already needed 2 more surgeries! And there is still a fourth pending because her esophageal dilatation continues to worsen.

She is being followed up by neurologists, gastroenterologists, pediatric surgeons, phoneticians, occupational therapists, physical therapists, oral rehabilitators, dietitians, and other specialists, and each one has put her through dozens of additional studies, to which we have had to submit our baby girl of only a few months old, and that she has braved with more courage than any adult I know… But still, no baby on this earth should have to go through that…

Alison’s current state is that she continues to vomit constantly, sometimes up to 15-20 times a day; has forgotten how to eat through the mouth and needs to be fed through her G-tube, and she has a significant neurodevelopmental delay. At almost a year old, her abilities are that of a 4 to 5 month old baby. She has spastic paralysis, and continues with epileptic seizures. Due to all these circumstances, she has needed, and still needs, many kinds of therapies, medications, and rehabilitation, since the day we finally brought her home. And all of that, plus all of her different diagnostic studies and procedures, we have moved heaven and earth to get for her, but WE NEED HELP, we no longer have the resources to continue with the major interventions that she needs, and it’s vital for her that her therapies don’t stop, her continued development depends on that, so that she can acquire basic skills such as learning how to eat again, being able to sit on her own, crawl, and eventually walk! All to give her the possibility of a good future!

We need help to be able to give her the best chance of improving her quality of life! To pay for the many specialist’s evaluations that she still needs, all of which are outside of our city, help to pay for the endoscopies and surgeries that she still needs to continue to deal with the complications of that first fateful surgery, and above all, help so that my baby does not have to go through any more suffering… so that her day-to-day life isn’t just pains and discomfort; no being deserves that, but less of all a sweet little angel who doesn’t even know anything else about the world yet! I don’t want her “normal” to be always feeling sick, I don't want that to be the only thing she knows about life…

This is why I turn to you, because the health system that I have at hand has already failed me many times, and has turned its back on me many others. If you can help us in any way we will be eternally grateful, there are no small amounts that you can contribute… Whatever is within your reach adds up to a difference for Alison, grain by grain you can help us build the mountain; for instance, every 60 USD we reach it is a consultation with one of her doctors covered, every 150 USD represents 30 more days we can afford her medications, 500 USD would mean one more month that we can take her to all of her therapies, 1000 USD would mean that she can finally be evaluated by the best neurodevelopmental specialist in Mexico and hopefully being able to enroll her in that rehabilitation program, reaching 6000 USD would allow us to enroll her in a center specialized in swallowing disorders in patients with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, and, achieving our total fundraising goal would translate into us being able to offer her all of her evaluations, invasive studies, and surgery, with a little less fear of not being able to face one more complication, and also being listened to and treated with dignity, and most important of all: in a hospital with adequate resources…

If you can contribute in other ways, or you can help us by sharing this message with other people who can help too, maybe you could be changing the course of my baby's future…

Thank you in advance for at least having read what weighs so heavily on my heart… And if you want to leave us words of support and encouragement, those also count for a lot!

A big hug to you, Orle, Alberto and Alison.