This section is a spattering of highlights in Katies life as remembered by Mom and Dad.   Dad's side of the sorry is in blue while Moms observations are in Purple.

From the beginning: I have to start at the beginning to give you the real picture. I am having a good day, Jan. 13/01 so I will write about the positives.

As a young lady 20 years old, 20 years ago,  I met the most incredible guy. He filled all my expectations of the perfect friend, boyfriend. Within a few years he became the perfect husband and father. We had the perfect life, if there is such a thing. We bought our first home, 1350 sq. ft. I thought it was a mansion. I would have been happy in a shoe box. Dave had a good job, I was pregnant with our first child. To top it off, financially I was able to stay at home to raise our daughter. Things were tight but as long as the three of us were together that is all that mattered.To date, our daughter, Hilary is the most beautiful, intelligent, caring 16 year old I know. Hilary was 2 years old and I got pregnant with our second child. Life was still too good to be true. I had a pregnancy with increased morning sickness and exhaustion. It was written off to caring for a toddler. What everyone didn't know was, Hilary was the best baby. On November 13/87 I gave birth to our second daughter. It was a very easy labour. She was 7lb.3oz. We named her Katelyn(Katie). The day after her birth she didn't seem right. She was too sleepy. I ask for the pediatrician to look at her. The nurses told me I was having post partum depression. I was 26yrs. old and didn't know what that was. Depression was a word that I had never thought of in my life. The pediatrician looked at Katie after days of my insistance. He told me there was definitely a problem. "Your daughter has microcephaly". I didn't know what that was. He explained small head meaning there was an injury to the baby during my pregnancy. "How is that possible?" There was extensive testing done on Katie and myself. Over the coarse of 6 months we were told the following. She was severely brain damaged due to the  cytomegalovirus in my first trimester. "Due to the what virus". I had symptoms of a cold and was extremely exhausted for about two weeks in my first trimester. "That is what caused Katie's problems?????". I couldn't believe it was as bad as they said. Dave and I would just make her normal. We will work with her. The days got tougher and tougher. Eventually we found out she was deaf and blind, seizures, hardly ever slept, had difficulty eating and breathing, her body was so tight she couldn't have bowel movements. There were days I never thought I would make it through the day. The closest family lived 1 1/2 hours away. Dave worked all day and was trying to study for his accounting designation in the evening. I needed his help desperately. He was only 3 credits from finishing. He couldn't write his January exam. How could he possible be ready for it? The study periods became his lunch hour at work. Hilary was a big help, but she was only 3 years old herself. She grew up too fast. At 16 she is beyond her years. Dave and I had to get real serious. He had to get his  accounting designation. It was starting to look like he was going to be the sole provider. The costs of hospital trips were starting to accumulate. He studied and passed his exams for a Certified Management Accountant. The start of a better life.  Within a few years we moved to a bigger house. To bad, Katie's problems came with us. As Katie grew older her problems grew bigger. Only to have a child who is a 6 year old newborn would be a piece of cake. Now we are into periods of I.V. antibiotics at home, oxygen, suctioning, continuous g-tube feedings, kidney infections, yeast infections, surgeries the list goes on.  There has to be more to life than this, we were telling each other. We decided to not take any birth control precautions and see what happens. "Were we meant to have another child????". The next month I was pregnant. God had our life mapped out for us. Maybe he(God) knows what he is doing. On June 5/92, I gave birth to a beautiful healthy baby boy. I thought I was dreaming. Could I really be feeling this joy? It was then that I realized what Katie had taught us. We had grown so much as a family. We were feeling things that most people don't feel in a life time. The appreciation for life. There is not a day goes by that I do not count my blessings. I appreciate and respect my family more than anything. I have the best life. A husband and 3 children that worship me. I have given them my life. They know they can count on me for anything. What ever it takes I will be there for them. I will fight to the end for Katie. The daily smiles on my Dave(43), Hilary(16), Katie(13) and Davey(8) face keeps me going. They are all so successful in their own way. Dave is the controller of a medium size company and loves his job. Hilary is smart, athletic, happy and is highly respected by all her peers at school, Davey is at the top of his class, averages one goal per soccer game and helps daily with Katie's care. Last but not least Katie. Katie is happier at school than she has ever been in her life. We have finally found the perfect Intervenor. Katie has finally shown the teachers she can smile, laugh, vocalize when talked to, and be healthy because she is not stressed out from school. Katie has over come numerous surgeries and illnesses when not expected to make it. Plenty of love is her medicine. Her will to live gives me strength. How can I possible give up with the amount of fight Katie still has in her. Life will go on and this family will continue to grow and learn and be better people for what we have been through. God gave us a life to live and we are going to live it to the fullest. Hilary has no patience for people that don't take advantage of their brain and use it to its full potential. I have no patience for people crying the blues over  something they can change. Davey has no patience for people who are not nice. Dave has no patience for not giving your 100%. He is always giving 110%. Katie has no patience for people who show no respect.

Discovering there was a problem:

We were still in the hospital approximately three days after Katies arrival waiting for the results of the ultrasound of the brain.  It seemed like it was a long time in waiting although in hind sight everything did happen quite quickly. I decided to walk over to Dr. Rayar's office although it was threatening to rain.   Once at his office the receptionist informed me that I had no appointment but she would speak to the doctor.  Dr. Rayar had me in an office within 5 minutes ahead of other patients.  He explained that he was coming to see us as soon as his clinic was finished and he would appreciate it if I allowed him to explain it to Kim.  He then proceeded to tell me that the ultrasound showed that the ventricles in the Brain were very enlarged on top of the head being small to start with.  This indicated there was considerable brain damage.

I can remember clearly walking back to the hospital tears in my eyes trying to prevent myself from uncontrollable sobbing while the rain came down.   I made it into Kim's room, composed and relayed the news to her.  She shrieked out as I told her what I knew as we both cried.  The nurses came running and some of the other parents we had met also came to find out what was the matter.  Soon a whisper fell over the hospital floor while the news past that what Kim was afraid of was true.  Something was very Wrong!  The only thing the doctors could do was to send us for tests to find out why and for specialists to give us an idea how severe the problem was and what to expect.

The Tests to find out what caused the problem:

We were sent to a genetic doctor to explore the reasons.   Blood tests were done on both Kim and Katie. Katie had her first Cat Scan while Mom and Dad endured a detailed set of questions that asked among other things whether there is any possibility of being related.  We weren't and the results of the scan and titers (results of the blood tests) indicated that Katie had been the victim of CMV (Cytomegalovirus).  The titers indicated the virus and the spattering of calcium deposits throughout her brain were classic examples of the infection.  Unfortunately for us (& Katie), this virus, one of only a few that cross the placenta and enter the womb occurred in the first trimester and whatever damage that occurred then affected the balance of her brains development.  I was glad to find that we had done nothing to cause this condition after hearing all the things in  genetic counseling that could have gone wrong.  Knowing it was not our fault was nice but it did not comfort us. What was to become of Katies life.  I thought, from information I had read or heard during my life that maybe this wasn't as big a deal as Dr. Rayer projected.  If the Brain was small, maybe Katie could would use a larger % of it.  I had heard that we use only a small portion of our brains capacity, so why couldn't Katie use a higher %?   Why won't it keep developing/growing like all children's do.  I wanted hope.

First Neurological Visit:

Katie saw Dr. McGreal at the Hospital for Sick Children for a visit to assess the situation and what we had been lead to believe, to give us an idea of what we might expect in her life.  Will she live long, ... will she talk, walk etc...etc.  The visit gave me much short term and false hope.  I remember this visit all too well, like it was yesterday.  Who was this man and who did he think he was.  He told us that he could not tell how long she might live or how well she would do.  He isn't a guru.  He said she had a microcephalic head.  So What!   He told us that the girl in his med. school that was valedictorian in the year he graduated had to have had the smallest head he head seen. Look at what she accomplished.   Take your child home and enjoy her.  Expect that she will be behind in developing from the other kids.  Were these words of medical knowledge being imparted on us or were these his words of wisdom.  I agree that we should take her home and enjoy her however, we didn't make the trip to the big & famous hospital to hear that.   We wanted some understanding of what to expect or look for in our future.   What he said only strengthened my hope that she would miraculously use a larger portion of her Brain and surprise everyone. NOT THE CASE AT ALL. THANKS FOR THE HELP DR. MCGREAL!!

Deaf & Blind:

We again went to HSC (Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children) for tests on both her hearing and vision.  At this point she was several months old and we were undetermined as to whether she was responding to visual and auditory stimulus.   We were anxious to hear the results however, I was surprised to get a phone call from the Genetics' Dr. late on a Friday of a long weekend.  I was told there was no response determined in both vision and hearing.  I went home and was quieter than normal that weekend keeping this knowledge to myself.  I wanted us to have a nice weekend and tried to hide the information from Kim.  At the end of the weekend she asked me if anything was wrong. At that point I told her and couldn't believe it was true.   We decide to reserve judgement until she was older and we could determine the status for ourselves.  We still can't believe that anybody would call on a Friday of a long weekend and drop that kind of bad news.

Head of Pediatrics consults - let her die

Katie had a very difficult time making it through her first few years. Actually only the last few have been relatively stable.  The early years were filled with pneumonia. For many months she would be admitted at Peel Memorial Hospital for a week, put on antibiotics and sent home.  She would be great for a day or so and it would start all over.  Her breathing would become laboured, the temperature would start rising and she would end up in the hospital.  This went on for months and at one point the head of pediatrics at the time approached Kim and I and asked to meet us.   His point was that we had done all we could and she would never get well; we were ruining our lives trying to take of her and she would never know who we were.   Speaking as parents, we felt that we had to fight for our child and do all we could for her.  If she was to give up the fight then that would be the best that we could do and therefore couldn't fault ourselves for her demise.  We responded to the doctors words with the request to be more aggressive with the antibiotic treatment for a longer time so that we knew that the original infection was eliminated as maybe the reoccurrence of pneumonia can be eliminated that way.  This was successful for a short while and needless to say we avoided Peel hospital and tried to use HSC whenever possible.  This created more undue stress with the distance from home being greater and the family being pulled apart even more.  We feel that the doctor had good intentions, although his values of life were far different than ours.  The decision to let our child live was not ours to make, nor do we want to be in a position to have to make this decision.

The First Operation - G-Tube and Nissan fundleplication

Life Saving Operation -Emergency Tonsillectomy

First Hearing Aids - she's excited beyond our dreams

The YES I CAN AWARD