Hannah S.

Our story begins in 2007, my wife Kari and I had a beautiful little girl named Hannah. At two months old we took her in for her two month check-up and that’s when our lives were going to change forever. the doctor said she looked a little jaundiced, and she wanted to run a couple test. that night around 6 pm we got a call from our doctor saying we need to get to St. Louis right away, we had appointments first thing in the morning.

After three days of testing we were told they wanted to do surgery. when they got in there it was determined that she didn’t have bile ducts that drain her liver. This disease is called Biliary Atresia, they then proceeded to do a Kasi procedure. The Kasai is where they take your intestine and hook it to your liver to get it to drain.

The surgery went well and after weeks of recovery we were able to go home. After a few weeks home she was having trouble breathing so back to the hospital we went. They sent her back to St. Louis via ambulance and its was determined she had an infection where they had hook her intestine to her liver.

So after another week of hospital stay and lots of antibiotics she was able to go home again. We were told to start preparing mentally for a transplant since her odds of needing one were pretty good. Hannah is now almost 8 years old and is still doing good without having a transplant. The only issues lately has been getting varices in her esophagus.

About every 6 months she has a upper endoscopy to look for them and if she has any they band them. Other than that she is a perfectly normal child that loves to tumble, play softball and snowmobile. She is the strongest person I know, and has been an inspiration to all of us.

So in 2010 she inspired me to take my love for my daughter and my passion for snowmobiling and combine the two to help raise awareness for her disease. So I decided to attempt to break the world record for most miles on a snowmobile in 24 hours.

With her cheering me on from the pits I was able to beat the record by riding 1474 miles in 24 hours. People ask me how I was able to persevere? To me it was easy, no matter what I was going through was nothing compared to what Hannah was dealing with. She is amazing, and a wonderful example of the power of prayer.