02/08/2024
The past few weeks have been incredibly difficult for me. It's hard to express the overwhelming pain of watching your child fight for their life. It's a feeling that leaves me feeling helpless. Our hospital follow-up last Friday was just like all the others, with the same probing questions that I assume are meant to evaluate my mental state, because who could possibly remain unaffected while living in a perpetual state of life or death? "How do you do it, mom?" "How do you navigate through these dark days?" I despise that question. The truth is, you just do it. There's no option to curl up and hide. How do I do it? I don't have a definitive answer. Perhaps, guided by her radiance, powered by love, and fueled by hope. Savannah is a sweet little ray of sunshine, always smiling no matter what she's going through. It's the unwavering love for her that propels me forward. And although I may feel helpless at times, I remain hopeful that one day, there will be a treatment for her.
My prayers and hopes are firmly fixed on the possibility of that day arriving.
I got an email last night that honestly couldn't have come at a better time. As I've mentioned, I've been feeling pretty helpless lately, always feeling like I'm not doing enough to find an effective treatment for Savannah. Well, one of the companies I applied to a few months ago, which focuses on developing A*O therapies for nana rare diseases, reached out. At first, they didn't think an A*O could fix Savannah's mutation, but they've been looking into every possible approach. While it's not a definitive answer, they have come up with an allele-selective A*O to specifically target the mutation in Savannah's SMC1A gene, focusing on a shorter gene transcript version. They've already sent this proposed sequence to several researchers to see if it could result in a functional protein or at least a sufficiently functional protein that would result in a clinical benefit.
I know this is all pretty complex and hard to grasp. Savannah's disease is due to a mutation in her SMC1A gene, causing the protein it produces to stop prematurely, rendering it nonfunctional. The A*O would be designed to bind to the mutated area, resulting in a functional protein. We've set up a meeting with them on Feb 2nd to discuss the possibilities further.
So far, this has only been done for 15 individuals worldwide! It's not a definitive answer, but there's a very real possibility that my sweet girl may receive a personalized treatment tailored to the root cause of her disease!
Please keep Savannah in your prayers for positive news on February 2nd 💜