Elizabeth is a sweet little girl who loves Pooh Bear. She is the youngest of 3 children. And, she is one of the bravest, most courageous children ever to come into this world. This is her story.
From the start of Tina's
(Her mom) pregnancy with Elizabeth, Her husband and she both knew
Elizabeth would be a preterm baby. Around 17 weeks Tina was
already trying to abrupt. She was seeing Dr. Cope because of her
past history. She had a full placental abruption at 40 weeks
gestation with her first child, Christian and then with her
second boy, Carrol, at 31 weeks gestation she went into severe
shock, abrupted with pre-eclampsia and had to have an emergency
cesarean as well.
Winnie the pooh, and
Lizzie too!
Little Elizabeth finally made it to 24 weeks gestation. Tina
noticed that Elizabeth was no longer moving. Extremely worried,
her parents notified her doctor, who's nurses did not want them
to come in saying that was normal. But they did not listen, they
knew something was wrong and drove there anyway. The nurses first
listened to her heart beat and said everything was fine and to go
home, but Tina's husband would not listen to them and made them
zap her to try and make her move. When they could not make her
move, they immediately became worried and did a stress test which
came out very bad. They could not get Elizabeth to move at all,
so they immediately sent her parents to the hospital to have a
bio-physical ultrasound done.
Trust your
instincts.
When they were doing the exam, they immediately called the
doctors in and gave Tina two doses of steroids to start trying to
let Elizabeth's lungs to form, which after 12hrs they did an
emergency cesarean. At 7:51am
January 10, 1997, Elizabeth came
into this world weighing 1
lb 10ozs at 24 weeks gestation.
Tina's beautiful baby girl had arrived. They told Tina that her
placenta had died. Immediately her husband and Tina knew that
they might not have Elizabeth for very long and it was very hard
to bond themselves to her. They both honestly were preparing for
the worst, but after 10 days, Elizabeth was still with them and
the doctors told them that she had no brain bleeds and so far
everything was ok.
"The human spirit is stronger than
anything that happens to it." - C.C. Scott
She stayed for 3 1/2 months in the NICU. She had PDA, but it was
closed with medications, also common respiratory problems
associated with premies.BUT... She also had severe brain bleeds
(grade 3 and 4), which her parents were never told about. In April, 1997, Elizabeth was sent home. Tina and Tim were told
she was fine, but 9 days later she was sent to Arkansas
Children's Hospital with MRSA, a very bad staff infection. She
spent a week there then was sent home, only to go back with the
same infection 3 days later. The doctors told them that she would
be fine after her stay in the hospital. Well, she started crying
a lot and would keep her hand fisted a lot and her legs extended
out and they were very stiff. Her parents complained to the
doctors about this and were told that it was just due to her
prematurity and not to worry. After complaining enough they were
finally able to have her examined by a specialist in September,
1997. Elizabeth had an MRI done on her brain and they learned the
awful news which they should have been told when she was in the
hospital. Elizabeth had PVL(Periventricular
Leukolamelacia) with Cerebral Palsy with grade
3 and 4 bleeds of the brain. She had
Spastic Quadriplegia also.
"Courage is resistence to fear,
mastery of fear-not absence of fear." -Mark Twain
Then, when she was 11 months old she was not gaining weight. She
only weighed 11pds. So in December, 1997, Elizabeth had her first
G-tube put in. Well, she still was not gaining weight because she
was having problems keeping food down. So in March, 1998, the
doctors did a nessin to help keep the food down. She also has severe sleep apnea. She is still on a monitor and pulse ox. She has
severe problems about gagging all the time and she gets lots of
colds and ear infections. She just had her second pair of tubes
put in in April, 1999. She has her own wheelchair and she just learned how to roll over at the age of 2. She cannot sit on her own, nor can
she crawl. She has problems about
keeping her weight up to 20 pds. She goes to school for Physical
Therapy, Occupational Therapy, and Speech 5 times a week, and due
to her medical problems, she had a full time RN. She loves to
play with her big brothers whom are Christian and Carrol. She
loves to smile at everyone. Tina's husband's name is Timothy and
Elizabeth is 1000 percent Daddy's girl.
"Nothing is impossible
to a willing heart." - John Heywood
Find out how Elizabeth is doing!
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