Ukiah's Intro

My little guy was born April 15th, 2008. He has been through so much, he is an constant inspiration to me.

When Ukiah was born he had a severe case of laryngomalacia, a moderate size ASD/PDA, and cleft lip & palate. The bad airway kept him in the NICU for the first two and half months of his life. He had two surgeries to open up his airway including a supraglotoplasty and a epiglottopexy. He also had a fundoapplication as well as g-tube put in. Due to the small airway swallowing was made very difficult and dangerous.

After we got home everything was going pretty good, he was smiling, laughing and cooing up a storm. He even when through one more surgery to repair his lip. Then the bad event happened that almost meant his life. He, his nurse and I were traveling in the car in route to a cardiology appointement when disater struck. Some mucus plug got in his airway and he couldn't clear it out, basically he couldn't breath and stopped breathing all together. I pulled over at the nearest exit and when I got to him he was totally blue and unresponsive. CPR was started on him immediatly, he was not recesitated until we got to the hospital about 20 minutes later. The doctors said he suffored a hypoxia type of event, which is very simular to a drowing victim.

At this point he was intubated and heavly sedatied, he was going to be shipped to chidrens hosptial for further care. Several agonizing days went by, with an onslaught of tests and doctors at his bed side. The result is that he has moderate brain damage to his gray matter and white matter. The hard thing the outcome is anywhere from full recovery to never being able to walk or talk. The harder thing is we will not know the severity until atleast a year to two years after the event.

Three months have now passed since that day, and we have actually got off the baclofin and inderal. Progress is slow but steady. Little milestones, and I do mean little are celebrated and cheared on. As these are such small steps I want to keep a journal as attempt to keep a record of my son's progress and recovery. Also, there is so much information out there it will allow me to keep notes.