Innisfailians have rallied to raise more than $18,000 on behalf of a two-year-old boy who is battling a devastating rare disease that is slowly drowning him to death.
Tristan Laidlaw is afflicted with a neurological degenerative disorder that is connected to or similar to cystic fibrosis (CF), a devastating disease that affects the lungs, pancreas, liver, intestines, and sinuses. The medical community does not have a name for his disease but ultimately the child faces being drowned to death as his lungs fill with mucous. As well, the disease will ultimately shut down all his organs. Already the toddler has lost 80 per cent of his hearing.
The Laidlaw family is under increasing emotional and financial pressure to provide daily treatment for Tristan, who must take up to 30 medications a day, sleep with oxygen tanks at night and be on a strict diet and bowel schedule. A dozen medical specialists in Calgary, Red Deer and Edmonton are treating the child.
But since the Province reported his story last January, the community has stepped up to help the struggling family.
Last weekend a fundraiser, which included a Sno-Pitch Tournament, a silent auction at the Fox and Hound Sports Pub and an online campaign, raised a total of $18,245 for the family.
“I am more than overwhelmed with the turnout and how this town always comes around to help someone in need,” said Kristen Spatz, night manager at the sports pub who spearheaded the fundraising campaign. “The fundraiser was a great success and there was a lot of people there. I hope this helps the family and gets Tristan what he needs to live a life a two-year-old should be living.”
Spatz said the eight-team Sno-Pitch Tournament on Feb. 22 raised $1,215 while the Fox and Hound fundraiser that night collected $5,260.
Meanwhile, an online fundraising campaign organized by Innisfailians Rick Vooys and Candis Seifried collected $6,000. Vooys' employer, WorleyParsonsCord, an international provider of professional services for resource and energy industries that has an office in Blackfalds, matched the $6,000.
“We are absolutely overwhelmed and humbled over the amount of support we have got. All the kindness and prayers have meant the world to us,” said the child's mother Tara.
She said the moving community response has come at a time when her son's condition recently took a turn for the worse following the first of six surgeries that are scheduled this year.
Tara said five days after a seven and a half hour surgery on Feb. 6 in Calgary Tristan was diagnosed with pneumonia.
“It has been a rough couple of weeks for him,” said Tara, adding the goal of the surgery was to increase the flow of oxygen into his lungs. “He has been on 24-hour watch and has not been feeling good at all. Hopefully he will be getting better in the next month.”
She said Tristan's next surgery is in Edmonton on May 6. Doctors will attempt to build up his immune system with an ultimate goal of giving him a double lung transplant within the next year.
“They won't give him a pair of lungs until his immune system is able to receive them and fight off any bad things that come,” said Tara. “You have to have a high immune system before they will give you the transplant.”
In the meantime, the Laidlaw family is enrolling their child this month into the Child Life Therapy program at the Alberta Children's Hospital in Calgary to help him over the emotional trauma of repeated hospital visits.
“He is terrified with anything to do with medical stuff,” said Tara. “He can't have a bed in his room because he is so scared of beds. He is terrified of rubber gloves and lab coats or anything.”
