Bayou City Crossfit

Vic and the folks at Bayou City CrossFit continue to amaze me! Check out their latest post on www.bayoucitycrossfit.com. Our gratitude for what they're doing for Olivia and other kids in similar situations can't be expressed with words. We hope you'll consider participating!

From Bayou City's Website

Bayou City Crossfit will be hosting a fundraiser to benefit Texas Children’s Hospital in representation of Chad Stevens’ daughter Olivia. Olivia has an extremely rare chromosomal deletion and has been in and out of the hospital for the past 10 months. She has been a fighter going to therapy 7 days a week and getting better every day. Chad’s letter to the Bayou City Crossfit Community:

Bayou City CrossFit Community,

As some of you may know, my daughter Olivia was born almost 10 months ago. Olivia’s battle against adversity started before she was born. During my wife Leslie’s pregnancy, we found out Olivia was growing slower than most babies and were referred to a series of specialists associated with Texas Children’s Hospital. As a result of those visits, we learned that Olivia really looked like a normal baby, just smaller and with a few issues that we’d need to look into after she was born.

So the big day came! Olivia was born July 20 and weighed in at 3 pounds, 11 ounces. Right away, a team of neonatologists whisked Olivia away for evaluation. She had a blocked airway and wasn’t breathing. The blockage was cleared, Olivia met mom and she went straight to the Neonatal ICU at Texas Children’s.

After that, Olivia was watched 24×7 by the staff at Texas Children’s for 57 days.

Olivia’s first few days in the NICU were trying for the entire family, but mostly for her. Olivia had complete blood work done, an MRI of her head, an ultrasound of her head, an ultrasound of her heart, an echocardiogram of her heart, an ultrasound of her abdomen, x-rays of her lungs, and complete sequencing of her chromosomes.

I was completely overwhelmed by fear. These were literally the worst moments of my life, as the doctors told us that there was a chance that Olivia had a life threatening condition that she most likely wouldn’t survive. So I waited, and cried, and waited, and cried, and prayed, and prayed, and cried, and prayed, and prayed, and waited, and cried, and waited. Then, one by one, the tests came back, mostly positive! Olivia has an extremely rare chromosomal deletion, something that wouldn’t have been diagnosable a few years ago. That condition has resulted in minor issues, but nothing life threatening.

I’d be lying if I said that since Olivia came home that things have been “normal”. She has therapy 7 times a week and we’ve been back to Texas Children’s more times that I want to admit, but Olivia is getting better every day. She will undoubtedly wear glasses and hearing aids, and have to work a lot harder than the average child to learn, but she’s a fighter. Watching her fight through all of this hardship has been life changing; it’s so amazing what this little girl’s determination has taught us.

That’s were CrossFit makes its appearance in this story. After spending countless hours in the hospital and at work, I needed something to keep me from turning into a complete bowl of Jell-O and to work off a whole lot of stress. I showed up at the box knowing that I was going to get crushed by the workouts, but knew I needed to do it too. Then it happened, I became a CF addict and the community and Bayou City CrossFit pulled me in. Everyone that works out at a great box knows what I mean.

I look at Olivia’s fight and CrossFit and see so many similarities. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been going through a WOD completely exhausted and wanting to quit, only to think about Olivia’s fight and realize how much of a baby I’m being. This concept led to the birth of an idea Vic and I had about a CrossFit Fundraiser to benefit Texas Children’s Hospital.

This event, “Perseverance Through Hardship – 57 reps for TCH” will be held Saturday, June 26 starting at 9:00A.M at the Harriet and Joe Foster YMCA (1234 W. 34th). The event will cost participants $57 per team. This will be a battle buddy WOD, two people per team. There will be three divisions: female, male, and coed. This event consists of a timed WOD (8 exercises, 57 reps each) with prizes going to the top 3 finishers in standard and scaled groups. After the WOD, we’ll have food and beverages to celebrate the event. For those not competing, a donation would be greatly appreciated to help cover the expenses of the event, with any surplus going to Texas Children’s. The event will be held at the YMCA off of 34th and Ella. To register, contact Chad at csteven1@gmail.com or Vic at vic@bayoucitycrossfit.com. More information will be given after regionals.