Featured

This is us

This is where it all began…

Our family, like any other, was striving for the “American Dream”. We had a beautiful house, I made enough money to support my family and Rachel could be a stay at home mom. It was everything we had ever wanted.

We had our first born during COVID19 which came with all kinds of its own frustrations, but nothing in comparison to what we were about to face…

We first learned about Amadea’s condition during the anatomy scan around 20 weeks. For this scan, the ultrasound tech didn’t say much other than “I can’t get clear images of the head”. From there, Rachel was rebooked with a different medical imaging site. For this scan, they revealed that Amadea had something going on. At the time, their response was simply “she is very unlikely to survive birth. We can’t guarantee, but if we could, we would”. We immediately left, completely devastated by the news. We prayed about it and we felt peace about Amadea. We knew she was going to be alright. We continued on as usual.

Rachel told her midwife that she didn’t want this pregnancy to be treated any differently. This didn’t really work as it was frequently brought up throughout. The worst of it was when she received info on donating tissue from stillborn right on her due date!! It was truly unbelievable.

Now the day had finally come. Amadea was on her way. She was born October 13 at 3:21am. We don’t have a birth weight for her unfortunately. Red Deer hospital handled the entire situation about as poorly as they could have. People were constantly trying to tell us how she would never thrive, how she would never be able to eat on her own among many other issues. We were sent home after 14 hours of admission. We pushed to be discharged due to being treated poorly. We returned home and continued life as we wanted. Amadea thrived, feeding on her own, playing and sleeping as any newborn would.

Unfortunately, our first real challenge was coming up as Amadea neared one month of age…

Our Newest Family Member!

We have officially been home for a number of months now and we are all thriving! We have put our all into our family and this meant both of us remaining at home full time so that Amadea gets the care she needs and deserves. With this, we have put everything into our new candle business- Simply Canadian Candle Company. This company not only supports Amadea’s care, it also pays our bills, our mortgage and feeds us. We are beyond thankful for the level of support that we have received already. Our company is doing great and we trust that we will continue to see huge improvements over the remainder of the first year.

With that stuff out of the way, we are THRILLED to announce the birth of our newest family member- Eliyanah Seraphina Dempster. Born May 16 at 8:10PM weighing 7lbs. Eliyanah is as healthy as can be, eating well and pooping like crazy! We are thrilled that we were able to push through our past trauma and continue with our original dream of a large family. Thank you to everyone who has continued to love on us and our family, to those who have supported us unconditionally and without asking. Your love and support has not gone unnoticed.

Latest hospital stay and headed home

This was one of the most terrifying things Amadea has been through, even though it was short lived (which we are beyond thankful for). What started as a simple skin infection on her leg, quickly turned into something far more serious and deadly as the infection suddenly entered into her blood stream. This in turn quickly led to septic shock. Amadea’s body reacted by becoming extremely hypothermic, reaching a low point of 31 degrees. Her heart rate rapidly declined during transit in the ambulance from Drayton Valley to Edmonton which required a quick response from the PICU Transport team. They administered epinephrine in order to get her blood pressure up as well as her heart rate. I’m incredibly proud of how well Rachel handled the situation as she was alone with the transport team and Amadea. She remained calm and made the correct call in leaving most of the details out while I drove to Edmonton with our other daughter during what was the worst snow storm we had dealt with during the entire year. She knew it was in our best interest that I remained calm in order to get myself as well as Adeline to Edmonton safely. After 24 hours of antibiotics (the strongest antibiotics currently in existence), Amadea quickly turned around and things started improving quickly. She remained on 2 different antibiotics over the next 10 days as she continued to recover at the stollery. We have now been home for a month roughly. I would also like to add that during our time at the hospital, we were blessed in a way that is honestly hard to put into words. The incredible people at Church In the Vine came together and raised the rest of the money for us to be able to get a vehicle to be able to transport Amadea correctly and safely. Also, thank you to everyone else outside of Church in the Vine who donated to us as well. There are a lot of you out there. We are so grateful for each and every one of you. Your money has gone towards something that is truly so important to us. For our family to finally be able to leave the house together again is huge. We have been housebound for 6 months. We have not been able to leave without either having someone watch the kids, or only one of us leaving. Plus, it’s not like we can hire a babysitter as they would need a medical license to be able to watch Amadea unfortunately. The one picture is our first drive with Amadea in our new to us, 2016 Honda Odyssey as we returned home from the Stollery! We love you all, thank you again to everyone who has supported our family. You continue to amaze us each and every day. We feel like most of you should be sick and tired of hearing our needs by this point, yet, you turn around and completely blow us away again and again. We absolutely would not have been able to do this without all of you. ❤️

Life after the hospital

Our family has finally made it home. We are beyond thankful that we made it home just before Christmas. We ended up taking home a ventilator in order to continue care for Amadea at home in a much safer setting.

In the month that we have been home, Amadea has made great strides towards recovery. When we first arrived, Amadea was dependent on the ventilator 24/7 with oxygen. Currently, she is now spending hours at a time off of the ventilator without oxygen or occasionally with a small amount of blow by oxygen.

Adeline has also enjoyed being back home. She loves spending her day playing with her sister and enjoying her many animals that she absolutely adores! She had an amazing Christmas which was definitely improved thanks to someone nominating our family for Santa’s Anonymous. Our family was beyond blessed to receive from this organization. Thank you to whoever nominated us and thank you to the volunteers that make it possible!

Our family also got to experience something amazing. David Hogan made the time to come to our house in order to lay hands on Amadea. The power of prayer and in agreement as a group is powerful. We are continue to trust and believe for a truly miraculous change in Amadea!

We also have some amazing news! We are expecting!! We have a new little bundle of joy with an expected arrival in late May. Our family could not be more excited!

Finally, we are excited to announce the launch of our new home based business, Simply Canadian Candle Company. This has been in the works for over 2 years and is finally in a place where we have been able to officially start selling our product. We have a new website which is simplycanadiancc.com . The link can be found on the home page as well. Thank you to the many family and friends who have supported us as we begin this new journey!

Edmonton Oiler’s Visit! December 4, 2023

Today was a great day. Two of the Edmonton Oilers stopped by Ronald McDonald House where we’ve been staying with Addy. The guys were great with her. The made crafts and chatted with us. We learned about Ekholm’s family and found out the Nugent-Hopkins is a quiet guy.

Addy was so excited. It blessed our hearts to see her grinning from ear to ear. The girls’ Papa was there with us to enjoy it all as well. It was a day to remember.

Update December 2, 2023

Another update on Amadea.
We were discharged for a whole 3 days before having to be admitted again into the Stollery ICU due to a virus that she caught in the shared rooms in at the Stollery. Just another reason why the Stollery needs a new hospital. Stuffing sick, isolated kids with other children who are recovering from something respiratory is wrong. It’s why we need to continue to support a new Stollery building as a province. It needs to happen.

Anyways, it’s been 3 long months of dealing with different illnesses now and it’s getting old. We are tired and frustrated, but we will continue to push forward. Our kids need us. We are expecting to be home before Christmas so we can properly celebrate as a family!

Thank you everyone for your prayers and support for our family. You all continue to blow us away with your love for our family. I apologize for a more down post, it’s been tough. You have all made it a heck of a lot easier on us though, so thank you ❤️

On a positive note, I’d like to personally thank Weyerhaeuser for purchasing the specialized car seat for Amadea. This is an absolute blessing and a true Christmas miracle! This means the absolute world to us. Amadea hasn’t been able to use a car seat for the last few months and this will finally allow us to travel safely, that is, once we get a vehicle that accommodates the new car seat.

On that note, we are looking for a minivan, specifically a Toyota Sienna or a Honda Odyssey. We are extremely limited in which vehicles can hold this car seat. These two we do know can accommodate the car seat.

Yet another positive note, thank you Pristine Detailing in Drayton Valley! Your support means the absolute world. It really came when we needed it. Thank you ❤️

November 6, 2023

Little update on our girl.

Today is the start of week 4. Still working on coming off of CPAP. She put on a lot of weight in a short period of time due to a change in food as well as a huge increase in fluid volume during this stay. It appears the added weight is causing her to obstruct while sleeping so she doesn’t get a proper breath hence the need for CPAP. She does great when she’s awake and playing with her sister, she only requires it while sleeping. We are in a shared room which makes things incredibly difficult to manage our family life. We did get moved to a private room for a day as our roommate decided it was a good idea to light up a blunt in the room (I’m not kidding). That joy of being in a private room was very short lived and we are back to being in a little corner of a shared room unfortunately. To those who deal with this long term (we know of families that spend a year plus here) , I have a huge amount of respect for you. It’s a whole new level of mentally taxing being in a shared room with complete strangers. We can’t wait to be home, whenever that may be. We still don’t have a timeline, but it is feeling closer.

I also wanted to extend a massive thank you to the many people who are supporting us financially, with a meal and with their prayers. We honestly didn’t expect this level of support again. You guys are all amazing, we love all of you and we can’t say thank you enough. You have all helped lighten the burden in one way or another. One day, Rachel and I will be in a place where we can help support others who are struggling. It’s hard for us to feel dependent on the love and support of others, but we greatly appreciate it.

October 20, 2023

We are unfortunately back in the Stollery PICU with our little one. She got back to back respiratory illnesses which led to pneumonia. It’s incredibly difficult being here. Last time, Amadea was the least stable child in the entire unit. This time, she’s the most stable. We have witnessed families losing their young children from cancer and other horrible things. As a father, it absolutely tears you apart to see other families go through loss. It’s hard, but we continue to remind ourselves of all the things we have that we can be grateful for.

October 13, 2023

Amadea’s First Birthday

Happy first birthday to our sweet baby girl, Amadea! It’s been an absolutely insane rollercoaster. You have been through so much, yet you are so incredibly strong. You are such a snuggle bug. Your love for maple syrup is absolutely adorable and it always puts you in a good mood. I could go on and on about your incredible strength and resilience, but just know that your parents are so proud of you. We love you so much ❤️

For anyone wondering (I get asked a lot), no there won’t be any surgery. Surgeons have refused to work on her as they view the risk as too great. This doesn’t matter to us as we have and always will have our faith in God. Surgery has never been our go to or our first hope.

As for an update, Amadea has been doing well. We have been away from the hospital since April and we are beyond thankful for that. She’s currently fighting some kind of respiratory virus of some kind which has been very hard on her and our family. I haven’t been able to work much in the last month as she requires full time care and constant monitoring. We have had multiple episodes of her going completely blue. We are thankful to have the equipment available in our house to manage this kind of situation, but it doesn’t make it any less stressful. As nice as it is to have the help of nurses in the hospital, it is so much worse for our family. The last thing we want is for Adeline to be separated from her family. It’s hard on her and it’s hard on us. We will remain at home anytime we are able too. Thankfully she is recovering and we have made it through the worst of it. Thank you to everyone who has continued to support our family and continually prays for us daily.