Children's Hospital Campaign

No matter how bad you think things are, remember, there's always someone else who has it worse.

My man Cooper was diagnosed with a brain tumor, a choroid plexus papilloma in medical terms, in January 2001 when he was around 7 months old. At that time, the tumor was the size of a grapefruit. Dr Cogen at Children's National Medical Center performed three surgeries to fully remove the tumor and one surgery for a subdural hematoma from January 2001 until June 2001. He had a residual bone defect that required a cranioplasty (a titanium plate). Dr Carson of Johns Hopkins performed the cranioplasty in March of 2004.

Currently, Dr Packer who is mentioned in the article below is Cooper’s neurologist and we see him about once a year. In fact we just saw him this past Monday. Cooper started having leg convulsions (seizures) about a year ago and Dr Packer is treating these with medication. The seizures usually occur in the early morning hours and last about a minute. Ethan will come in and tell us that Cooper is having “Shaky Leg”. We’ll go in and sit with him for the duration after which he usually goes right back to sleep. If this is the worst thing that comes out of the whole ordeal, well we’ll take that.

The great news is that his MRIs keep looking better and better. His brain is growing, no signs of hydrocephalous (water build up that would require a shunt which for a time we thought he was going to have to have until we started seeing Dr Carson at Johns Hopkins) and no sign of tumor re-growth.

The article below reminds me how lucky we are. I sat and cried at my desk this morning when I thought about what this family has to go through. How can life be so unfair?

The second link is straight to the Children’s Hospital Foundation where you could make a donation. You can make a donation in honor of Cooper but you don’t have to, just making a donation would be honor enough.


Washington Post Article

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