Yuma family seeks help for baby's care

  A Yuma family is seeking the help of the community.

  Guillermo and DeAnn Ayala were expecting a healthy baby. The baby was born with many complications and at only six days after his birth, they had accumulated many expenses. Now, they need help paying their baby’s medical bills.

 Eric Izaiah Ayala was born Nov. 11  at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix. Even though they were aware that he could  be born with some heart problems, they never thought it would get worse.

  Baby Eric had to have heart surgery because he was born with five holes in his heart. It is a medical condition called Tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart defect.

 "When we found out about his condition, we we're very upset," said DeAnn Ayala. "We knew about his condition before he was born, but the doctor told us that it was reparable. But after six days he suffered different complications and they had to operate.

  "His doctors called it Tetralogy of Fallot with Pulmonary Atresia." In Pulmonary Atresia, no pulmonary valve exists. Consequently, blood can't flow from the right ventricle into the pulmonary artery and on to the lungs.

 Right now the baby is doing fine, his condition is stable, but he will need to be very closely monitored with weekly or biweekly checkups.

 "Eric is stable right now, but the doctors told us he will need more tests, frequent checkups, and basically what we need is to pay the medical bills," said his mother. "We do have medical insurance, but it is not enough to pay what he'll need in the future."

 Due to this type of illness, baby Eric will need another surgery in five months, "and he will continue to need more surgeries until he outgrows the different stages of his condition," said Ayala.

 She also mentioned that baby Eric was born with a cleft palate, a treatable birth defect in which the roof of the mouth (palate) does not develop normally during pregnancy, and it also needs to be repaired.

 Because of his heart problems at the time of his birth, Eric had to be hospitalized for three weeks. "We really need to pay many different things like the hospital room, anesthesiology, his medications," said Ayala.

 She added that at this point, their debt is approximately $100,000.

  That is why the Ayalas are seeking the community’s help to pay the medical bills, the expensive surgeries and the special treatments their son still needs.

  If you are interested in helping a bank account has been opened at National Bank by Guillermo Ayala's employer B&H Refrigeration. The family can be contacted at 783-5286.