Danny was born on the morning of October 2nd, 1976. He was small, but vigorous, the doctor said. As you can see, he looked a little worried in his first picture. As it turned out, he had a right to be worried.
A precipitous drop in his blood sugar was followed by seizures and brain damage (severe, as it turned out). Danny was transferred to Stanford Hospital from our smaller hospital in Redwood City, California, where he spent the next two weeks. One of the kinder neurologists at the hospital told us that it might take him longer to learn to walk and talk than it takes other children. We are still waiting.
During that first year we made regular visits to the Stanford Neurology Clinic on Brain Damage day, as I began calling it. In those days Danny was having almost continuous small seizures which made him cranky. Unless he was eating or sleeping, he screamed. We were ushered into a small holding room, always painted a pale green, to wait for several hours before we were seen by the "pretend" doctor, an intern or a resident. Then, with our screaming child, we would wait for another hour for the "real" doctor to appear. He would ratchet up Danny's seizure medications and tell us to come back in a few weeks.
Finally, at one visit, we waited over three hours with our shreiking infant before a new intern, the "pretend" doctor, walked in the room and said, "What seems to be the problem today?" I wanted to scream at this fool and tell him to look at the records before he walked in the room and "pretended" to be helping our son. John, my husband, was much cooler and told him calmly that if the "real" doctor was not in there to see us within ten minutes, we were going home. We waited twenty minutes and then walked out.
It felt like parent liberation day to us. When we got home, we received a phone call from the "real" doctor, furious that we had walked out. John asked him why they scheduled patients to wait for three hours before being seen? The "real" doctor said, fuming, that Stanford is a teaching hospital and they can't predict when patients will be seen. John said we lived close enough that they could just call when they were almost ready to see us and then we wouldn't have to wait three hours. Interestingly enough, the neurologist wrote an almost apologetic letter to our pediatrician about the incident. We switched to a private neurologist after that. By this time we knew our limits when it came to putting up with unhelpful people and felt a little more in control of the situation with our poor baby boy.
Danny at ten, still not walking and talking, still screeching but not quite as much as he used to, and still having all kinds of problems secondary to cerebral palsy and the brain damage he suffered at birth, but isn't he cute? And his new school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was his and our salvation, especially with the birth of our second son with cerebral palsy and our sweet newly adopted daughter.
Danny is now an exuberant young man, still having "Danny Days" now and then. He had his first party on Thursday as a favored alumni at his old school with yogurt pie for everyone. Today, he celebrated with cupcakes at his group home. Tomorrow, his grandparents will come over to have lunch and blueberry pie, one of Danny's favorites. Eating big gooey desserts is one of his greatest pleasures. His happiness is our happiness.
Happy birthday, Danny Boy!
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