Fortune Builders has helped my family a great deal by allowing us to grow and develop a very successful real estate investing business over the last year. We really love how the company advocates the support for everyone in the program and the power of the community and because of that, I would like to get this information out to my FortuneBuilders family.

My youngest granddaughter has been hospitalized for the last two weeks. She is just two months old. She was having problems with reflexes and seemed to be struggling a little to breath. She was taken to the doctor and hospitalized immediate. She was placed on oxygen and antibiotics as they thought it was meningitis. Within the first few days they began to discuss another possibility, which was Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Type 1. SMA is an inherited genetic disorder. No one in either of our families have heard of anyone with this disorder prior to this. We soon found out that both parents must have the recessive gene in order for a baby to be born with this. They say that about one in every 40-60 people carry this gene. The disorder is “the number one genetic killer of infants”. The disorder causes all muscles to gradually become very weak. Eventually the child will be unable to breath on their own. It affects all muscles but not the brain. They did the genetic blood test early last week and we had to wait patiently for the results knowing that if it came back positive her life expectancy would be 2 years or possibly less. On Tuesday, the results were in and they are positive. She does have SMA Type 1.

She is currently on a Bi-PAP machine to help her breath but she does get some time off of it thirty minutes a day 2-3 times a day so she can be snuggled. Her left lung is collapsed but they believe that at this point they can make her well enough to go home off the Bi-PAP machine so she can live as normal a life as possible for as long as possible. They believe the lung collapsed due to having a cold not the SMA so it should get a little better. Hopefully, her tiny weak body can fight the illness. Her parents, Joe & Nikki are in there twenties making life ending decisions for their brand new baby girl. At this time they do not want her to have to live on machines for a long period of time.

We have developed a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/prayersforcadence that I would really like to get out to as many people as possible so they can go in and like the page as well as make comments. We give updates about her progress and post pictures a few times a day. There are many people that have offered donations of toys and even a special car seat for SMA babies since they have difficulty in regular car seats. There are a few other moms that make comments that also have with a child with SMA. Reading the other stories and seeing all the thoughts and prayers from everyone really seems to help Joe and Nikki. They are on the site a lot and read everything posted.

Thank you very much,

Cindy Kwiatkowski