Survivors' Stories - a young child
It was November, 1995 when I found my normally healthy active beautiful two year old boy slumped in bed dribbling, he had had a cold and a bit of a sore throat which is what I thought the dribbling was from. I sat him up, he fell over, I tried to get him to walk - no luck, his left arm was limp and his face slightly dropped, never in my mind did I think "stroke". At two years old - get real.
I started to panic, still not knowing what might be wrong. I took him just up the road to his GP and called my husband who came immediately. Our GP told us to go to "Accident Emergency" at the Local Hospital.They could offer no explanation. They told us to go to the Royal Children's Hospital, about two hours drive away. We still didn't have any idea what was happening to our baby. It was a long trip, Jayden seemed relatively happy though not eating or drinking. My husband and I were just in turmoil, not knowing was a nightmare.
We arrived at the Children's, more questions and tests, MRI's, cat scans, nuclear medicine scans, EEG's, EEC's and so on. All I could think was how could this be happening to us and poor Jayden, in such pain and confusion. It must have been about 3am when the team of doctors came and told us Jayden had had a Stroke, they didn't know why yet, but were going to do more tests in the next few hours.
We were devastated, all the worst scenarios were going through our minds. How would we cope. I was 4 months pregnant with my second child at the time and was told to stay calm. How? Our whole life had just fallen apart. Our perfectly normal 25 month old boy now could not even sit up. We did not know it yet if his speech was affected, thankfully it wasn't, but his left side was. He couldn't walk, sit up or use his left arm.
We spent about three weeks in the hospital trying to come to terms with what had happened and why. Still no answers, just a faulty blood vessel, the doctors could not guarantee that this would not happen again, which is not what you want to hear. While we were in hospital Jayden had heaps of tests which I cannot remember, but I do remember the day he started to walk again. We had day leave so we went to the shopping centre toy shop.
Something must have caught his eye on the shelf, he wriggled out of the stroller and stumbled over to the shelf. We were crying with joy, he was trying to walk. After many blood lips and bruised limbs, Jayden finely started walking, wobbling and limping but walking. I brought him some new boots.
We arrived home and all the physio and occupational therapy appointments started three times a week. This went on for about twelve months and then started to slow down a bit. Jayden wears an AFO on hid leg and Second Skin garment on his arm to give him a bit of support, he finds it a bit hard at school, but tries really hard to do stuff. I never let him see me upset, I just encourage, encourage and pray every day he never has another Stroke.
Thank you for sharing your story about Jayden.
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