One year ago today Hector and I were facing the hardest day of our life. Our sweet Santiago was born with right coronal craniosynostosis and he had to have corrective surgery last March 25th, at only 7 weeks old, to fix it. We had a wonderful surgeon team, Dr. T and Dr. B, at Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital who are also a part of UT Medical School. They performed a minimally invasive microscopic procedure on Santiago to release the bones in his skull to allow for normal growth. I won't give a full recap of the day but I could definitely do it moment by moment because every moment of that day is so fresh in my mind. I think it always will be. Just thinking about it brings tears to my eyes. If you would like to read about how that day went, you can by clicking here. There are posts before and after that tell more of Santiago's story as well if you are interested.
Santiago is doing fabulous and I don't think you would even notice appearance-wise that he ever had anything wrong with him if you didn't know our story. The two newborn pictures here were taken before surgery by my friend Jennifer. He wore a helmet for about 10 weeks after surgery and we go back to Dr. T for follow up appointments every 6 months now. Our next appointment is in April. Dr. T will monitor his progress until he is 7 years old.
This is a condition that runs in my family - both my siblings were born with coronal craniosynostosis. Up until Santiago's birth, we were unsure if this was a dominant trait. Now we know that all our children have a 50% chance of having it as well, but we feel very fortunate that it can be fixed. I know there are a lot of babies out there born with much worse and I pray for them and their families daily. 
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