MARK SLUBAN
Mes motivations:
Hi everyone,
Today I’m asking for your help with a cause that’s important to me. I’ve given myself a challenge this year – the Tremblant’s 24h challenge for children’s health and well-being as I raise funds with my fellow participants for CHEO (Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario).
As some of you know CHEO is dear to me, back on August 14, 2009 ($813.09) Sharilee and I welcomed our second child to our family when she gave birth to Audrey Grace Sluban. From birth Audrey didn’t eat much. We tried everything and if we were to get an ounce of nourishment in her a day it would be an accomplishment. However after a few months she was eating less and less and combined her consistent vomiting of anything that she did intake resulted is rapid weight loss at a time when she should be gaining weight.
In early November we brought her into her pediatrician in hopes that she had gained weight. After weighing her we were ordered to get to CHEO immediately, he would have called an ambulance but he felt we could get her their faster.
This was a shock to us at the time as we were thinking we were making progress. When we got to CHEO they ran a blood test while Audrey waited with us in the waiting area. Suddenly a nurse ran in to the room and grabbed Audrey from Sharilee’s hands.
They put her on a bed in the hallway and a team of 4 or 5 people started working on her. I remember one doctor clapping his hands in front of Audrey’s face yelling her name “CLAP - AUDREY… CLAP – AUDREY!” as if to try and snap her out of something. We still didn’t know how bad things were just that she was rushed to ICU.
After spending 2 days in ICU the doctors and nurses at CHEO were able to get her to stable and eventually out of ICU and into a standard room for monitoring for a couple weeks.
We didn’t know how bad things were until a few days I saw what I thought was one of the doctors that was working on Audrey in the hallway when we first arrived at CHEO. However, I was told by another parent that we were sharing a room with that he isn’t a doctor, he was a priest. Later we found out he was a few seconds away from asking us if we wanted to baptise Audrey.
THAT was how we learned how dire the situation got as Audrey was only seconds away from leaving us.
Unbeknownst to anyone Audrey was born with an irregular kidney and what everyone though was just a bad case of colic was actually a faulty kidney that was sending urin back into her blood stream. She wasn’t feeding because her body didn’t want her to create urine as it was slowly killing her. It took months for a team of doctors across North America to figure out her problem. We had to live in CHEO for multiple weeks off and on during that time. In the end, they figured it out and after a successful 6 hour surgery Audrey spent another week at CHEO before being released as a healthy 8 month old.
Fast forward to 2022 and Audrey couldn’t be healthier, but I’ll never forget what she put us though during her first 8-months on this earth.
Those of us in the Ottawa area with children know how valuable it is to have a children’s hospital in our community. CHEO is a place were little miracles happy every day and I ask that you help me by making a donation to help ensure children in Ottawa and beyond get the amazing care they deserve.
You can help, too, by making a donation of any size, big or small… every dollar counts! I thank you for your generosity!
Donate here https://www.24htremblant.com/en/user/mark-sluban
**Donations of $20 or more are eligible for an income tax rec