Meet Carter — Stroke at age 9 months
When Carter was born, I felt like my life was complete! He was my second child, my second son, and I could not have have been happier. My husband and I both had careers that we loved. Life was really good, or so I thought at the time.
Soon after Carter’s arrival, life became somewhat complicated. At two months old, he was diagnosed with Failure to Thrive and from that moment on, our lives took a different turn. For the next seven months, we were on auto-pilot. We soon learned Carter had portal hypertension, two holes in his heart that needed repair, esophageal varices, and a rare anemia condition. The doctors thought that putting him on the liver transplant list would resolve a lot of his medical conditions.
Between finding the right formula to help him grow for the transplant, monthly blood transfusions for his anemia, and just being an infant, we found ourselves in the hospital a least once a month. We always kept an overnight bag in our vehicles just in case a doctor’s visit turned into a long weekend in the hospital. We had a routine and this became our new normal. But one of those weekends turned out differently.
It was a Sunday. We were about to get discharged from the hospital, but I knew Carter was just not himself. The doctors told me it would take some time for him to recover fully from a virus he had. My mommy gut told me otherwise. I was very persistent with my husband to take him to the pediatrician in the morning for a second opinion. I went to work and waited impatiently. As I sat at work not working and instead recalling the events of the weekend, I found myself describing Carter’s symptoms to a co-worker. She said those words I didn’t want to hear but knew: “It sounds like a stroke.”
Shortly thereafter, I received a call from my husband telling me those same words. “The doctor said it looks like he’s having or had a stroke.” Carter, my baby, my nine-month-old, was then life flighted to Texas Children’s Hospital where we had already spent so many sleepless nights and now more to follow. That visit to the hospital turned into 80 days. Five weeks after his first stroke, he had a second one while still in ICU. This one was really large – a left middle cerebral artery stroke. Again, my mommy gut had told me something was not right. He had slept a lot that day, and his eyes appeared to be rolled back. Doctors ran several tests, and then they finally listened to me and ran an MRI. It confirmed my fear.
We did not know what the future would look like for Carter back then. We were just in survival mode. Although our life is filled with doctors’ appointments, physical, occupational, feeding, and speech therapy, we feel so blessed to witness this little miracle child each day. His spirit shines so bright, just like his future. Today, Carter is a happy, healthy 5 year old, who walks, talks, dances and causes all sorts of mayhem. And we wouldn’t have it any other way. He put our faith to the test and he helped change our perception on what really matters.
