The plans have shifted.
A couple weeks ago, Stacy Fowlow was hoping that Braelyn would be home for Christmas.
Braelyn is a grade two student at Tumbler Ridge Elementary who recently went down to BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver to have both her kidneys removed.
The plan was to come back to Tumbler Ridge once she was able to do peritoneal dialysis, which attaches a catheter to the stomach and allows the family to do dialysis at home.
Unfortunately, says Fowlow, that isn’t going to happen for a while. “She has a big hematoma in her stomach so they can’t use her catheter as it causes her so much pain.”
The doctors proposed another surgery, but the family decided against it. “There’s no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again,” says Fowlow. So now the family is waiting, either for the hematoma to disappear or for a donor kidney to come available. Either way, it means that the family won’t be back home for Christmas, and Braelyn won’t be here for the Christmas party.
But though Braelyn won’t be home for Christmas, the school continues to raise funds for her.
This week Wednesday (the day before the paper comes out, and the day after it went to press) the Lion’s club will be hosting a hot lunch at the school as a fundraiser. In addition to donating all the food, they will be donating $1500 to the family.
All together so far, the school has raised about $5700. There are still donation cans at various businesses around town where people can donate to the family until next week.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
