A Longview resident needs our help. My daughter has organized a fundraiser for a great family that has a need. Please read the details below.
-Dr. Imholte


Meet Robin’s friend, Jaelyn. Jaelyn Buchanan-Anderson (Mark Morris High School Grad 2005) and her husband Cody Anderson (Kelso High School Grad 2004), welcomed a baby boy named Noah Anderson to the world October 11, 2010. Below is Jaelyn’s story in her own words. They are fighting to save Baby Noah’s life. He’s been in the NICU in Portland, OR for over 4 months. The prognosis looks good with time. They have medical insurance; however, with medical copays/deductibles, travel expenses (they live in Longview, WA and are driving to Portland daily, 120 miles round trip), child care costs for their 2 year old daughter, time off of work, etc., we’d like to give them a hand up (not a hand out) to get back on their feet and their baby boy home! So Thrive Advertising will match all of your donations up to $2,000. Our goal is to raise $4,000. That’s only $20 a person, 100 people! $20×100 people +Thrive Match=GOAL!

Donations can be made in the form of check made to: Jaelyn Anderson

Please mail them to Thrive Advertising: P.O. Box 2972 Renton, WA 98056

Baby Noah’s Story in the Words of his Mama, Jaelyn Buchanan-Anderson
“At 16 weeks into my pregnancy, we went in for an ultrasound to find out what we were having. We found out a lot more than him just being a boy. They saw things that weren’t quite right but wouldn’t give us very much information at that time, so they referred us to a specialist. They did an hour-long ultrasound, checking where every organ was and the blood flow to each. We then got brought into a conference room to have a discussion of our situation. They gave us the news of our little boy having CDH (congenital diaphragmatic hernia). CDH affects about 1 in 2500 births.

I felt like I was in a nightmare. They told us this could either be a genetic disorder or just a fluke so they suggested doing an amniocentesis. We needed to do one to make sure it was not genetic in case we wanted to have more children. They gave us the option of abortion because a lot of babies that have their liver in their chest (which our baby did) do not survive. Abortion was never an option in our book, so we decided to continue on with the pregnancy.

Our beautiful baby boy was born October 11, 2010. He was immediately rushed into a room to be intubated and put on a ventilator. He had his first surgery to repair the hole in his diaphragm and move 5 of his organs down from being in his chest on October 27th, 2010. After his surgery their goal was to get him to grow. With so many of his organs being in his chest, Noah’s lungs had no room to grow. One lung is very good in size at about 95% and his other is very small at about 5%. On December 7th, our insurance made us move to a kaiser hospital, so Noah was transported to St. Vincent hospital. We were there for 6 days until he was having problems with his pulmonary hypertension (a lot of babies with cdh have issues with this and it can be life threatening if it is a severe case). With pulmonary hypertension being such a life threatening issue, he was immediately transferred to the ohsu nicu where he could be observed by a cardiologist. Noah was doing very well and finally got onto a nasal flow which just provides oxygen to him.

We went home on December 27th and were home for 4 days until we had to rush him back to to the hospital due to respiratory distress. Since that day we have been in the pediatric icu at Doernbecher. Due to Noah having problems breathing, he was burning all of his calories trying to breathe which caused him not to gain any weight. The only way for him to grow new lung tissue is for him to grow in size. Because of this issue, noah had to have a trach put in and he is now on a ventilator that does all the breathing for him. So now he can use all those calories to grow, grow,  grow!! Noah will have a trach until he can support his breathing on his own. This has by far been the biggest challenge of our lives, we are so thankful that our baby boy is still with us!”