Hello! We would like to tell you our daughter's story she has gone through thus far in her short life. Her name is Amisha. She was born with a rare birth defect called Microtia. In appearance, microtia just looks like the person is missing one or both ears. What they do not see is the potential damage to the kidneys and heart that can come from this defect. During fetal development the ears and kidneys develop at the same time. The heart has already started developing before this but can still be affected by microtia. One out of every 10,000 children are born with Microtia but one out of every 8000 develop the more serious complications that can come with the condition, which our Amisha was one of them.

Living in a smaller town, we knew little of her condition other than the physical aspect. She was missing her right ear and her head was deformed because of that. She is deaf on the right side where ear is missing and has no hearing at all from that side as it is closed with no canal. At 6 months old she was diagnosed with Torticollis because of the microtia. Torticollis is the condition when the patient tilts his or her head to one side. Her physical therapist said it was because one neck muscle was shorter than the other and excersize would help. We were happy with that and went on doing her excersizes at home and still deal continue with the treatment.

During the six months after that, we started to see specialists about 5 hours away that knew more about her condition. They were knowledgable and we were told a lot of information about microtia. We also were told that she needed a special piece of equipment called a Doc Band immediatly. That is a device that dramatically reshapes the skull. It gets fitted at the Children's Hospital for her. After the initial moulding, we had to travel back again once a week for 6 weeks to get her fittings adjusted. After the 6 weeks, it was once every 2 weeks for 8 weeks. That's 11 trips at 10 hours a trip within 4 months, during the winter. This device was not covered under our health care and the cost was $3000, plus the trips, hotels and missed wages from work as all of our holiday days were used up with specialist appointments.

Amisha also has had other issues pop up. At the age of 6 months she had a seizure and spent 2 weeks in the hospital until she was diagnosed with kidney infection and she was put on antibiotics because of it. That day changed our whole life. Amisha was put on antibiotics as a profolactive as she was getting the infections on a regular basis. There is a chance that antibiotics can damage hearing. That is why we started getting her hearing checked every month. Once Amisha reached an age where she could tell us if something felt wrong we immediatley decided to take her off the anitbiotic. Her infections continued but we did not want to impare the only hearing that she has. When Amisha was 3 we went to see a geneticist to see why Amisha had all these health problems when our son, Krishin who is 2 years older, was fine. He recommended we get a xray of her spine as it should have been done when she was born. We came home and Veena did some research and since Amisha had to be sedated anyways as she was so young, she asked if they could do a MRI, which would show tissues and nerves as well as bones. Two days after Easter in 2007, we got the call that Amisha needed to see the neursurgoen immediatley and book surgery. Her spinal cord was tethered, and was attached to a mass at the end of her spine. If Veena had not done the research, Amisha would have potentially lost the use of her legs as it is a form of spina bifida. The spinal cord is supposed to move freely within the spinal column. If there is any reason that the cord can not move freely, it is tethered. Following surgery Amisha was to lay on her back for 48hrs but even on all the morphine she was on, she still wanted to be held by mommy.

She had the operation to remove tissue around the spinal cord the morning of July 31, 2007. She was in the hospital for a week and was still not comfortable with the pain, even though she was on morphine along with other medications. Shortly after we got home, there was some swelling around the cut. They suspect that it was some leakage of spinal fluid. Everything healed fine, and we now see the neurosurgeon once a year to ensure the cord does not retether as it can happen very quickly.

We still see several specialists regularly in Alberta during the year. Those include urologist, pediatrician, optical, neurosurgeon, dental and the cleft pallet clinic due to her microtia. In September of 2009 Amisha had her tonsils taken out and ended up with pneumonia. We keep copies of all Amisha's tests and recieved a copy from her follow up chest xray to ensure the pneumonia cleared up and found out something was found on her heart. With the good help of our geneticist we got into cardiology immediatley and they sedated Amisha for a MRI to ensure there was nothing wrong with her heart due to her upcoming surgeries in the USA. She had an echo, ekg and MRI done and more tests and we are thankful that as of right now everything checked out okay with her heart. Praise God.

There are many well qualified doctors that we have heard about in North America that can perform the physical reconstruction of the ear but only a few stood out. We wanted to find the best for our Amisha, as any parent would. Once an ear is attempted to be made, it cannot be redone or moved due to scar tissue. We also wanted someone who had done numerous ears and could show us results. In November 2005, we had an oportunity to fly to New York and attend a conference with arguably the best USA plastic surgeon for ear reconstruction, as well as another brilliant surgeon that performs a different surgery for microtia patients. The first surgeon we were impressed with basically pioneered the way rib graft is done today. He is also an accomplished sculptor. Another surgeon we talked with actually aligns the inner bones, creates an ear drum and a canal. Once done, the patient can hear out of that ear! Keeping in mind that it is not even close to 100% hearing, recognizing sound coming from a certain direction helps safty and classroom performance. These two doctors work together and they are the best in the USA. There are 3 ways of creating an ear; Medphor, prosthetics, and rib graft. With the medphor, they take a plastic mold and graft the childs skin overtop of it. We have seen some patients with medphor and talked to many parents and found that there is a higher percentage of rejection from the body. This means the skin does not adhere to the plastic creating sores and holes. The prosthetic is a snap on, snap off ear. This does not only, look the worst of the three but can be more expensive as each ear costs a lot to replace. The rib graft, which we chose for Amisha, is harvesting cartlige from a rib to create the structure of the ear and the body does not reject it as it is from itself. This looks the most realistic looking and has been the most trusted method of reconstruction. We will adding picture of before and after thruout the stages so you can follow Amisha's progress. It took us 6 years to find the right surgeon for our daughter.

She will need jaw distraction in her near future as her right side of her mouth is not alined due to her ear missing. While on these trips we are both missing work, often without pay. So while we are trying to get Amisha what shes needs done now, we made this website in hope to get help to raise the money for her Ear surgeries and her future surgeries in the usa to follow from now till shes 16.

Amisha turned 6 in December of 2009. Amisha needed to be 6 before the surgeon could harvest her rib to make her ear as your ear at that age is close to the same size as it will be during adulthood. In January of 2010 we travelled to California to have Stage 1 of the reconstruction done. The surgeries have to be 3 months apart as that is the time needed to heal between them. Amisha had stage 1 on January 21, 2010. The incision on her chest was a bit bigger than we thought it would be but she healed very well. The first Stage cost us quite a bit for the surgery, travel, meals and accomidation. Fortunatly we had a friend who lent us her vehicle, so we saved the cost of that the first trip. In total, Amisha's surgeries alone START at around $35,000 which is all out of our pocket. It is a huge struggle trying to come up with the fincances for it, but it will be SOOOoo well worth it. We are just two parents trying to give her the best we can, as any parent would. That does not include the cost of the Atresia repair to give her the hearing she does not have. That is an additional $20,000.

Amisha had Stage 2 done in April. This was to create an earlobe and attach it to the ribgraft that was placed under the skin. Amisha did well with this surgery and we have to say it was the easiest of the four surgeries she had done. Our stay was ten days there.

Stage 3 was done in July and was a bit tougher. I would have to say the toughest. At this stage they were taking a skin graft from Amisha's groin area which was to be expected painful but not what we expierenced which was much more:( The surgery itself was about 6 hours. They took about a 6 inch skin graft from her groin and pulled the ribgraft away from her head. Amisha was all wrapped up so we couldn't see anything for about two weeks. We had to stay 4 weeks in California for that stage. The first week Amisha started to experience alot of pain in her groin and head area. We ended up having to take her to the ER and get some vicoden. That hardly touched her pain:( It made for a very stressful first week for mommy and Amisha. I don't think I have seen her cry as much throughout the other surgeries. She was in so much pain. She finally got some other strong meds with it and was able to get some sleep.

After arriving home in August, Amisha fell off the bed and hit her head on a glass table. Of course, falling on her new ear:( It just wasn't healing right to begin with and we were very worried. It was very raw and honestly, we were very worried. She had an allergic reaction to the antibiotic cream Biactrican and that made it so it did not heal well at all. After falling, there were very bloody areas and very very raw skin showing, so I took her to our pediatrician. He is amazing!! He swabbed it and send them away. A week later we got a call saying that she needed to come to the clinic immediatley. We were told that there were 4 types of different bacteria growing on her ear. Of course the first thought, were all these surgeries going to lead to her not having a new ear:( I have never been so scared in my life. But with our amazing pediactrician, coinsiding with Dr.Brent, they did an amazing effort and after 2 weeks of Amisha being in the hospital on four different antbiotics....the ear started to heal. I can't tell you how thankful we were and still are. God was really watching out for Amisha.

Amisha had just finished healing and we were wondering if Stage 4 would go off in October as planned. The last and final stage. We didn't know she needed that stage until we got into Stage 3 as stage 4 can be done the same as stage 3 in a smaller number of cases. We were a little bit worried as that meant more money that we didnt have. Anyways, it had to be done. So off we went back to California for Stage 4....the final reconstruction stage!! We decided to drive to give the kids a bit of an adventure to see things that were out there that we normally wouldn't be able to see flying, as well as flights were very expensive at the time due to thanksgiving and end of season for more inexpensive flight options. Well, not even 20 mins out of Swift Current, we had a blowout. Being it was Thanksgiving weekend, we had very little time to decide what to do. We drove up the road, purchased the one tire we needed to replace our donut for $170.00. I mentioned to Mike, well maybe we should get the others checked just incase. I called ahead to Medicine hat and they got us in. Guess what, they had a sale, buy 3 tires get the fourth for free...ugh So they put our an on a hoist and found out that the other 3 had cracks. After discussing it, Mike and I decided we better be safe for the rest of the journey to California!

We missed our border but we drove late into the night to get to another one. It was the start to a bad trip. We got into California and our ABS light was staying on. We took it to a dealership there and found out that our two front hubs were shot along with the ABS! $3500 later we had our van out. So much for saving money to drive. More stress added to our lives. Well the one good thing that was coming out of this STage 4 is Amisha would have her ears (notice ears)! Yes... she would have two now, and they would be pierced:) She was sooo excited!!!

The last surgery was about 4 hours. As always watching the door to see if shes out yet. Well she came out and the first thing she asked .... did he pierce my ears? .... I said yes honey!!!! Dr.Brent made sure we reminded him when she went in. As with the ribgraft you have to be very careful of infection. In this stage he took a skin graft from behind her good ear to finish off the inside of the new ear. So again her head was shaved but this time both sides:( And stitiches on both ears. Her whole head was wrapped this time. We were very anxious to see everything but had to be patient! A week later we got to see it! WOW seeing my baby girl with two ears was so amazing and Amisha was sooooooo thrilled. I have never seen her look in the mirror so much!! After her head dressing came out we saw the sutures that Dr.Brent put in. He said that we had to turn them and put ointment on them. Well the week we were ready to go home, Amisha started having an allergic reaction, to the suture in her new ear:( Of course, this was a very big worry as Amisha really wanted earrings. So we called Dr.Brent and he said to see how it did. In the meantime I ran out and got some gold hoops as my ears are very sensative and I have to wear gold only, so I thought maybe thats why hers was doing that. Sure enough, we put them in and they were fine!! We were there for four weeks again and headed to drive home!!! When we arrived home, we had a HUGE banner on our window that said Congrats on your new ear Amisha and her whole class, our friends, family and so many people who love her signed it! What an amazing thing to come to home too!! Thanks to my great friend Amber for putting that together!!! After we had been home for a few weeks, Amisha was very excited to show all her friends. She had missed so much school and activities that she wanted to do something special. An earring party!! We had an amazing time!! We had a tea party and all her friends, teachers and all the people who helped with fundraisers in the past and more came to celebrate with her:) Amisha thanked everyone and her brother!! Throughout this adventure we had the most amazing friends and people who love us in our lives! We met so many new ones and families that were there with us and we will always treasure that. Amisha has a long road ahead of her but this chapter is behind her. Right now we are awaiting jaw surgery back in the USA and it will be done twice. Of course that is not covered once again for us by the government and we are in need to raise funds. Each surgery alone is $20,000 US, not including travel. So if you could pass along our website to anyone you know who could help that would be greatly appreicated. Every little bit adds up. We fought the government to pay for Amisha's ear surgery and they finally in the end refused even after getting them all the letters from doctors, lawyers etc. Even proving facts about depression. They refused, in short, because a form of the surgery exists in Canada when she is 16 years old. There is a multitude of reasons NOT to wait, including the depression and mental issues that is caused by bullying... especially in girls. Its too bad our health system failed us here. I am sure that if it was one of their children or grandchildren, they would have had a change of heart. Even if they were to offer to cover what the province would have paid to get it done within Canada when she was 16. But we tried! We just want to give Amisha the life she so deserves, just like any other parent would. No one can blame us for that!

Amisha will be turning 8 on December 2011. Before her 8th birthday she will be having her first jaw distraction. She is also being followed for her kidney problems, and her health problems due to her condition. She is in and out of the hospital and we are just trying to give our baby girl the best medical treatments we can. Any parent would want that for their child. We appreciate you reading our story and keeping Amisha in your prayers. It means the world to us.

We would LOVE to point out that Amisha's loving brother Krishin has given up SO much for his sister and has never asked for anything in return other than to be with her and spend time with her after her ordeals. He is very helpful throughout Amisha's surgeries as he comforts her as she goes into them, and she looks forward to seeing him after she gets out in recovery. His first words to her always are 'Sweety, I am here and I love you!' What more can you ask from a big brother. We love both of our children very much and one day to hope to give them the life they deserve while they can still enjoy it as kids.

Even thru out all this we would never change a thing about Amisha. Her spirit and personality is one of a kind. Seeing her on an every day basis, you would not guess she has been thru so much. We want to thank our friends and family who have supported us so much thru the hard times with meals and hugs, which mean the most. We could not have gotten this far without you all in our lives. Even thru all the tears you have brought us joy. Thank you for always praying for Amisha and visiting her and uplifting our spirits. Its a blessing. If you can help out in any way, please contact us or donate. If you can't donate, all we ask is you keep Amisha in your prayers! She has gone thru alot in her 6 years of life, spending lots of time in hospitals, and we as parents are just trying to give her the happiness that she deserves, and a chance of having a normal life! Thank you! God Bless!

That is the story of Amisha for right now. If you have any questions, please email me at vhockridge@sasktel.net. Thank you!