Christmas Giving 2011
Dear Friends:
This is Jamie’s
Smiles’ 7th year adopting families through the Macomb Infant
Preschool Program (MIPP). Winter is closing in and as frost turns to snow, we
need to think of those with less than ourselves. The families that we seek out
every year desperately need our help! Their kids have no coats, they are sick,
and hungry for knowledge and food…
This year we
have chosen to adopt the following deserving families with children with special
needs:
FAMILY #1
Single Mom, Alica, is 25 years old. She has twin children with special needs.
Her son, Demondrae (age 21 months), has a tracheotomy, is on a ventilator and
has a G-tube for feeding. If he gets too overwarm he also has seizures.
Her daughter, Cameron (age 21 months), is significantly developmentally delayed,
has eczema and reflux. Both children were born at 24 weeks gestation and lived
in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for five months. At birth,
Demondrae was 1lb. 8 oz. and Cameron was 1lb. 4oz.
Both children have had laser eye and heart surgery. One week after being
released from the hospital, Demondrae experienced extreme difficulty in
breathing at home and was aspirating his feedings. Mom took him back to a
hospital where he received a tracheotomy after another month’s stay. The
children require such intense care that nurses come four times a week to assist.
Alicia would like to work outside of the home, but because she is s single
parent and her children require such substantial care, she cannot work at this
time. In addition to being a devoted full-time mother, Alicia had to move
recently because her basement flooded and her landlord would not repair or
replace any of the water damaged clothing and other items or areas of the
house’s basement. The water also destroyed the wash and dryer that she
owned. She could not stay in the damaged house because both children have
asthma and the water damage has created dangerous mold. They moved with
Alicia’s Mom, Kim (Grandma), to a new house. Grandma is emotionally
supportive, but she is on a fixed income and can only help so much. They
have no other family in the area. The children’s father has not been
involved with them since before birth.
Kids
Need: Food,
winter coats, pajamas, winter clothing, shoes, socks, boots, hats, gloves,
diapers, bedding/sheets, books and toys
Mom
& Grandma Need:
Food, a winter coat, winter clothes,
bedding, shoes, boots, hat, gloves, bedding/sheets
FAMILY #2
Alketa and her husband, Ardian, have three daughters named Amber (age 10), Alsia
(age 8) and Aly (age 1 year). Aly was very premature and was born at 4 months
gestation. She also suffered a Brachial Plexus injury during birth which
is the severing of some nerves in the underarm at birth. This has caused
her to develop Erb’s Palsy which is a partial paralysis of the upper arm.
She has about 50 percent use of her right upper extremity. She also
suffered intraventricular hemorrhage at or around the time of her birth.
According to Wikipedia,
“This type of hemorrhage is
particularly common in infants, especially
premature infants or
those of very low birth weight. The cause of IVH in premature infants, unlike
that in older infants, children or adults, is rarely due to trauma. Instead it
is thought to result from changes in perfusion of the delicate cellular
structures that are present in the growing brain, augmented by the immaturity of
the cerebral circulatory system, which is especially vulnerable to hypoxic
ischemic
encephalopathy. The lack of blood flow results in cell death and subsequent breakdown of the
blood vessel walls, leading to bleeding. While this bleeding can result in
further injury, it is itself a marker for injury that has already occurred. Most
intraventricular hemorrhages occur in the first 72 hours after birth….”
Wikipedia goes on to say that IVH has a high mortality rate associated with it.
Aly is very small for her age and suffers from failure to thrive. Mom
spends much of every day trying to get Aly to eat. Aly is developmentally
delayed in her gross motor skills.
This
family was originally from Albania and moved to the United States about five
years ago. Dad works at McDonalds. He is a very hard worker and
takes as many shifts as he is allowed. His hours vary weekly and on slow
days he gets sent home. Dad attends night classes to improve his English
and his prospects for better employment. Mom stays at home to take care of
her three daughters and is studying to take her citizenship exam. The
family lives in an apartment and lives very frugally, but works hard to keep
their home neat and their finances in order. Dad has expressed sadness over not
being able to better provide for his family, but everything goes to living
expenses and they will not live beyond their means.
Kids
Need: Food,
winter coats, pajamas, winter clothing, shoes, socks, boots, hats, gloves,
diapers, bedding/sheets, books and toys
Mom
& Dad Need:
Food, a winter coat, winter clothes,
shoes, boots, hat, gloves, bedding/sheets
FAMILY #3
Sherri and her husband, Daniel Sr., have one son named Daniel, Jr. (age 18
months). Daniel, Jr.’s nickname is “Danno” and he was born as a breech birth
after a very quick labor (45 minutes) with the umbilical cord wrapped around his
neck. After birth he was hospitalized for three weeks with sever jaundice
and asthma. He still receives daily asthma treatments and his daily
activities are impaired by it. Danno is developmentally delayed and
continues to have feeding problems including difficulty swallowing and chocking
on his food. He also has difficulty in controlling his arms and head or in
holding himself steady. Mom cannot work until he can do more for himself
and his asthma stabilizes.
This
family is living in an apartment. Dad works in the building industry and
at home repair services, but his hours are inconsistent (sometimes as little as
one shift per week) which makes financial planning very difficult. The
family lives very frugally and takes the bus since they do not own a car, but
cannot make ends meet and have had difficulty in paying their heating bills.
Danno Needs: Food,
winter coats, pajamas, winter clothing, shoes, socks, boots, hats, gloves,
diapers, bedding/sheets, books and toys
Mom
& Dad Needs:
Food, a winter coat, winter clothes,
bedding, shoes, boots, hat, gloves, bedding/sheets
Even with another rough economic year upon us, we ask you to consider how much
worse it could be if your child or children were sick and you had economic
hardships. As Christmas approaches and we all tend to take inventory of
how much we have, both financially and in our family/friend support system, we
ask you to take a moment and consider helping others as well. Whether you can
donate $5 or $1,000, we will put it to the best use we can and the value that
our combined funds and efforts can have to others less fortunate than ourselves
is tremendous. We pool all of the funds and meet as many of the needs of
these families as possible.
Kohl's on 26 Mile Road in Shelby Township, generously gives us significant
discounts on the merchandise that we purchase in their store. As a result,
everything bought at Kohl's cost pennies on the dollar. Last year they also made
a $500 contribution and they helped to wrap the gifts for our families. They
have agreed to help out again this year!
Additionally, we have other vendors that give us discounts or contributions and
contribute yearly because they care. If we have more money than we need for
these three families, we will adopt more families or provide food and clothing
gift cards to them, as there are many others in need as we had to turn some down
this year and we heard there are even more still coming forward to ask for
assistance.
Also, because we ask that checks be made payable to the memorial fund at the
Shelby Community Foundation: SCF - Jamie's Smiles (Christmas) your contribution is tax deductible (please speak
with a tax professional for details).
If you prefer you can also contribute items, but these will not be tax
deductible. We also take gently used, newly washed children’s coats in
any size as there are many children in need of a warm winter coat in MIPP.
Time is flying by! We need to make our delivery to these families THE
BEGINNING OF DECEMBER!
If you are interested, please email your
commitment to info@JamiesSmiles.org
and send your check made out to SCF – Jamie’s Smiles (Christmas) to: PO Box
183181, Shelby Twp., MI 48318 as soon as possible so that we know what kind of
funding we have to work with this year. It is cold! So we get the coats,
hats and gloves to our families as soon as we can and would like to deliver the
rest of the items the beginning of December. But we need to know what our
budget will be, so please send your check or make your commitment as soon as
possible!
Thank you again! If you have any questions, please call us at 586/909-5305 or
you can visit us on the web at
www.JamiesSmiles.org.
We are also in great need of new or left over Christmas wrapping paper.
Thank you for time and consideration!
The Bates Family & Jamie’s Smiles
(Mark, Gretchen, Logan & Sidney)
PS
By way of background for those of you who are new to
the invitation (please bear with me if you have seen this information before),
for seven years we have championed adopting families of special needs children
through MIPP. This is the organization that gave Jameson such phenomenal care
and therapy while he was with us. We choose needy families with children with
special needs who need a "hand up." Often, people as lucky as ourselves, do not
realize the financial, physical and emotional burden of raising special
children. They are incredible! They are worth it! But fiscally speaking, they
can set you back so that you can never recover. In the 19 months that we had
Jamie, his care cost approximately $40,000 out of pocket and we had EXCELLENT
insurance. You can imagine what it does to people with lesser insurance and with
the loss of jobs in our state and the economy being so awful... Anyhow, we try
to help mitigate some of these costs for a couple of families per year......
Please join us in making a difference in these people’s lives...