The Vintage Apple: The Morgan Faith Fund

When a blog friend of mine, Tracy, reached out to me a few days ago letting me know about her cousin and her illness, I knew I had to post it here and share the story with all my readers and hope that we all can pull together and help this beautiful little girl out!!!

Meet Morgan:

Morgan was born on October 28, 2004 and has endured more medical procedures than any human should ever have to face. Morgan’s Mom, Amy, wrote about her condition below. It is long, but it gives you an idea what this family has faced.

Morgan has VACTERL Association. Every letter stand for a condition and those who have this have varying degrees.

V- Vertebral defects. She has congenital scoliosis. She has many curvatures in her spine and has been monitored since birth by routine x-rays, MRIs and cat scans. The curvature of her spine was found to have changed significantly six months ago at a routine follow up. This is the surgery she is getting done on 10/4. She is followed by orthopedics and the spine clinic for this.

A- Anal defects- she doesn’t have anything associated with this letter in her syndrome.

C- Cardiac-she is post operative for TOF (a heart defect). She has had two open heart surgeries, one at 13 days old and another at 3 years of age. She has also had 2 cardiac cauterizations and stents put in. As Morgan grows she will need possibly 2 more open heart surgeries. She is monitored by cardiology every 6 months with routine EKGs, cardiac echoes, and random lung scans. These scans are even more in-depth than what is regularly run.

TE- tracheoesophageal fistula. Basically this is a hole between the esophagus and the stomach. She had this surgery done when she was 2 days old. She went into cardiac and respiratory failure in 2007 and had a re-current fistula, meaning the one repaired opened up and had to be corrected again. She had her g-tube(feeding tube) placed when she was 2 days old. This is how she was feed up until 2007! She was followed by GI for this, but got discharged from the clinic 2 years ago.

R-Renal- She has one kidney. She had 2 kidneys at birth and it was developed very small and it basically disappeared. People can live successfully with one kidney. She still has yearly appointments with urology to follow her kidney. We pay real close attention to possible UTI's, because the one kidney needs to be protect as much as we can. Thankfully there has been no issues in awhile.

L- Limb abnormalities-when she was born she was born with shortened tibia and fibula bones, basically Morgan’s bone where her lower leg is connected to the ankle is short. Boston Ortho has followed her even when I was pregnant. The decision was made that best way for her to be mobile was a prosthetic leg. She started walking by herself in 2007. She has had a total of 4 surgeries on her legs. Morgan had a significant club foot when she was born and she was casted to correct that, and now wears an AFO brace to ensure stability. In the future she will need surgery on her foot to make it more flat because it is curved and has limited flexibility. We go to the NOPCO in North Andover every month for her leg to be adjusted and monitored.

Morgan is so happy all the time She never complains of anything, just goes with it, and often says to me "mom nothing is perfect, it is what you make it”

Health care is expensive, even for a healthy child. Morgan faces scans, appointments, procedures, and hospital visits just to have her condition monitored. This can be financially difficult for any family. Morgan will be having surgery very soon and anything and everything helps.

Please consider donating!!

I'm not a fancy graphic designer at all, but I made a little button that you can grab if you would like to help spread the word. It will direct all your readers here to this post so they can read more about Morgan.