FORKED RIVER, NJ — Alena Robles is a happy and cheerful 7-year-old girl, described by her family as “full of life.” Now, she’s fighting for her life after a sudden sickness left her comatose.
A fundraiser launched by the young girl’s aunt, Elizabeth Montoya Lavoie, hopes to give the Robles some extra money as the family grapples with mounting medical bills and an uncertain future.
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On March 10, Alena began feeling sick, according to Lavoie. The next day, she woke up with a headache.
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That’s when the seizures started.
She began having seizures “one after another,” Lavoie said, and was quickly rushed to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, where she remains in a coma in the ICU.
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“The doctors say that her body’s reaction to the flu has caused severe encephalitis : swelling in the brain, which caused her to seize,” Lavoie said. “The medical team is working tirelessly to combat the swelling in her brain, desperately trying to give her a chance to wake up.”
Lavoie – the older sister of Alena’s mother – told Patch she usually helps the family out as much as she can, but she herself lost her job and home in last summer’s Maui wildfires. And with Alena’s parents spending all day and night at the hospital with their daughter, they have no income right now.
Now, as the family experiences the unimaginable, they need help with unforeseen medical expenses.
You can find the fundraiser here.
But even if you’re unable to donate, the family pleads that you keep Alena in your prayers.
“Everything counts,” Lavoie said.
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