1 Pair of Socks Completely Changed the Quality of Life For a Baby Born With "Butterfly" Skin ~ health and fitness,celebrity news,fashion blog,beauty women,whole foods,quotes about love

mercredi 22 février 2017

1 Pair of Socks Completely Changed the Quality of Life For a Baby Born With "Butterfly" Skin

Although the birth of a child is memorable for every parent, baby Mackenzie's delivery was marked with both excitement as well as intense fear for her parents.

Immediately after giving birth, Liz Cadmus and her doctors discovered that Mackenzie was born with epidermolysis bullosa. This rare disorder causes immensely fragile skin that severely blisters and often sheds off. "I'll never forget the gasps when she was born - the inhale of everyone's breath when they saw that she was missing her skin," Liz told TODAY. "You could see blood vessels. You could see down to the bone."

As new parents, Liz and her husband, Nicholas, endured "a very dark time" while they learned how to help ease their baby's daily pain. "She is missing both keratin and collagen, and essentially those are like the fibrous glue that holds the layers of skin together," Liz said. "Learning to take care of Mackenzie was a journey - there is no cure for EB, so it's basically wound care. Nurses had to teach us how to take care of her."

"Butterfly children" is a common phrase for kids with EB because their skin is so delicate that it tears as easily as a butterfly's wings. When Mackenzie's parents brought her home, there were months of trial and error because whenever her bandages came off, it would cause even more damage to her skin. After some helpful advice from a nurse, the family tried out a new method of keeping her bandages on without destroying her skin: socks.

"I went to Walmart and bought lots of socks - I figured I'd keep trying different types until I found something that worked for Mackenzie," Liz said. "We found socks that worked, and as soon as she was able to switch to twice daily bandage changes instead of bandage changes every few hours, she started to heal."

Since then, Mackenzie's parents have created a Facebook page, Rock the Socks, to raise awareness for their baby's condition while also sharing what they've learned with the rest of the EB community. "Social media has become a big part of our life because it's such a rare disease and that's the only way to really communicate with other people who are going through what you're going through," Liz said.

In honor of their fighter's first birthday on Feb. 22, Liz and Nicholas are asking for people to post photos on social media of them rocking their socks with the hashtag #RTS1000. "Our goal is to get 1,000 individuals to post on her birthday to raise awareness. "EB is known as the worst disease you've never heard of, and these posts can help bring about awareness. She's amazing. She's so strong. She is such a fighter. Nothing really stops her . . . as long as she's bandaged and protected, you wouldn't know she has this horrific disease."

mercredi 22 février 2017