DiaryofCory

I carried Cory with much excitement as he was my first baby. I had unexpected problems detected on the first ultrasound which the doctors didn't know exactly what was going on. They said that the baby was very small for it's gestational age but they weren't sure why. I went through ultrasounds every month and they decided at 39 weeks to try to induce labor because they didn't know exactly what was going on, but they said that the baby would be better off out of the womb where they could diagnose and treat whatever problem there was.
On October 6, 1991, I was admitted to St. Joseph's Hospital in Clinton Twp and the following morning the doctors started the induction procedure. The inducing didn't work and they tried for three days (he was stubborn even then) and so they did an ultrasound again on the third day (Oct 9) to make sure he was doing okay. When the ultrasound was done and I was back in my room, the doctor came in and said that the ultrasound showed the baby's ventricles very enlarged and that they would have to do a c-section within a couple hours and get him out.
October 9, 1991, I was wheeled in for the c-section and when Cory was taken out, they did the usual tests and then let me see him (didn't have time to hold him) for a couple minutes before they wisked him away to the NICU and started running tests on him. I was sown up and sent to recovery and then to a room to continue recovering and crying. I did not get to see Cory again for a few hours and then just for a few minutes before they transferred him to Children's Hospital in Detroit. It was very late at night so I told Steve to go home and sleep and to get to the hospital early in the morning to see Cory.
Dr. Alexa Canady was the doctor referred to Cory's case and I know now that he was in very good and loving hands. She diagnosed him with Microcephaly (small brain and small head) and Hydrocephalus and put a shunt in at three days old to save his life.
Steve got to go back and forth between hospitals until Saturday the 12th when I was finally released. I made a beeline or I should say my sister, Kathy and my mom helped me to make a slow beeline for Children's Hospital within a couple hours of being released. I was still real sore from my c-section and was not moving too fast, so we got a wheelchair once we got to the hospital. He had already had his shunt surgery and was doing quite well. I went back and forth for the next week, had doctors tell me that he might be mentally retarded, didn't know what he would be able to do and basically the worst scenario and the better scenario. Cory was released from the hospital on October 19th. Well, Dr. Canady was amazed when we took him for his follow up appointments because he was doing all the things they never thought he would do. He continued to do well with minor development delays and went through early intervention through the local Intermediate District. He did fine with a couple revisions starting in 1993 and had one or two revisions a year until March 1997.
In January 1997, his brother, Patrick, was born. In March 1997, his number of revisions would take a drastic turn upwards from one or two a year to ten or eleven a year and that trend tended to get worse and worse until he was having a surgery or surgeries just about every month. Sometimes it was one and sometimes it was three or four within a week or two. He had an extra catheter added along the way and then most of the problems began with the new catheter and when all was said and done this past June of 2001, he had had 62 revisions in total with 57 of those between March of 1997 and June of 2001.
June 2001
This past June he was admitted for four of those shunt revisions and ended up having three surgeries within a few days and had to be externalized on the third surgery because of hemmoraghing and blood clots in both ventricles. As result of these blood clots he did have some mild stroking which affected his muscle tone in his leg and affected his sense of time. After being externalized, the doctors realized that Cory's brain was reabsorbing all the spinal fluid on its own for the first time in his life. Having had all the shunt tubing removed internally when he was externalized, they just had to pull the external shunts out of his head, surgical glue the tiny incisions closed and Cory was shunt free for the first time in his life since being three days old.
Cory has been shunt free for almost 3 months now and though we have problems from many many surgeries and a little stroke, and many concerns along the way, he has been the most affectionate boy (when he is in the mood) he has been in the last four years. We hope to continue down this shuntless path though there are no guarantees but many hopes. We have made it over the one year mark without the shunt and cat scans still look good. We do have many residual problems resulting from the surgeries, stroke, Patrick's death and his dad's and my divorce. Cory is growing and is finally putting on some weight and is at least up to my shoulder now.

The story of Cory's first 10 years of life