JOURNEY AS TOLD BY MOTHER AMY
Kaiden was my first child, I was 17 when I fell pregnant with him. I gave birth to kaiden at 18 and was instantly in love with him. The midwife was doing all of his checks and said his soft spot on his head was very large! But was normal.
My nan kept saying she had been having dreams that something wasn’t right, and she prayed for a fix for him. Months went by and kaiden wasn’t hitting his milestones. He couldn’t crawl, he couldn’t hold a bottle and never walked.
I fell pregnant again when Kaiden was 3 months old and had the home midwife come around when I had my daughter. She saw the size of Kaiden’s head and noticed how limited he was and made me a doctors appointment. I went to the doctors and they said Kaiden’s head was on the 95th percentile but still normal! I demanded a referral to the peadiatrician/ specialist.
We finally got into to see the pead. We were sitting in the waiting room with Kaiden and his sister and the doctor walked out and called out Kaiden’s name, I turn the double pram around and he looked at Kaiden and said I hope your here for your sons head. My gut sunk! My mum was with us and the doctor walked off into his room and when we got to the room he was already on the phone to Newcastle John hunter organising scans and surgery!
Kaiden had his first VP shunt placed when he was 14 months old, his sister was only 7 weeks old! We cried and screamed and cried some more! Kaiden up to the age of 5 years old had 5 brain surgeries! The shunts just kept failing. Kaiden is almost 12 now and his last shunt revision was when he was five. The last revision was done because I noticed Kaiden blinking a lot! He had a blocked shunt and the fluid build up behind his eyes was causing his optical nerve to swell and cause pain and discomfort hence the blinking.
Kaiden now has to wear glasses and be regularly checked for pressure behind his eyes but he is now going great!
