Alana Vazquez

Alana Vazquez, granddaughter of Tom/Jan Rozema, has been diagnosed with a condition that promises near certain blindness within a short period of time; she is only 3 years old.  Fortunately, as of December 2011, she has been accepted into a program at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.  This is the world-renowned research center for LCA and RP eye disease gene therapy.  Please pray that this opportunity will provide positive experiences--and ultimately healing for her vision.  Her next key appointment is February 28, 2012.

UPDATE--MARCH 1--Please see the following update received from Alana's parents:

"Can’t say enough good things about this Dr. we saw in Philly. He rocks! He confirmed for us that Alana does have RP and that she has lost 1/2 to 2/3 of her peripheral vision so far. He informed us that on Sunny Days or when on water she needs to be wearing sunglasses, because it can actually hurt her retinas more (which we didn't know). They are going to run two more DNA tests on her. They also took Brooks' blood and my blood as well. There is a 1 in 3 chance they will be able to ID which gene of hers is defected, which those are great odds with this disease :) If they find something they then have our blood to test the DNA on to see where the defected gene came from. Since there is no family history of RP, they want to know how she came to get the defected gene. In most RP people there is a family history that they are aware of. It will take at least 6 months to get the results back if not longer, we were told to take it in 6 month time frames. They also took pictures of her Retina (different than the ones before) this actually measures the thickness of the Retina. ( the thicker the better) we were able to see in her eyes were the good and bad parts are in her retinas, that was cool, it gave us a better understanding of what is going on in her eyes as far as how this is affecting her. We have to go back every 2 years to see this Dr. They want to chart her progression.  This was a great visit! We are very happy with everything they are doing."