The Beginning

It was Sunday, September 8, 1985. My parents were in Wichita, KS with my grandfather (dad’s dad) that had just had a heart attack. All of my family was over there at the time praying my grandfather would make it through the day.  My mom was 32 weeks pregnant and doing pretty well up to that point. ---- A little back story, they had told my parents around 20 weeks that there were abnormalities on the sonogram.  They told my parents that I had downs syndrome, I would never talk, never walk and I would be fully dependent on them for my entire life. They even gave them the option of aborting the pregnancy. At that time, my parents had been married for 10 years. They had tried to have a child for so long and there was nothing a doctor nor a sonogram were going to change that.

She started having some back aches and some mild contractions, then her water broke. She had everything planned in my hometown of Hutchinson, Kansas. She was not delivering me anywhere else! So, my dad, the good man that he is, along with my aunt that is a nurse, raced her back home (45 miles or so) so I could be brought into this world. Delivery didn’t go as planned and they ended up doing an emergency C-section. Back then you weren’t even awake, so my mom didn’t get to hold me until 2 days later. Knowing that my mom was in good hands, he went on to find out if he had a daughter or a son!

After delivery, they told my dad he had a healthy baby boy. That of course was far from the truth after more investigation. They then said, you have a daughter and she is in critical condition. We need to life watch her to WICHITA! Mind you this is where they had just came from. They told my dad that I had no openings on the outside and it was vital that I had surgery as soon as possible.

At this point, my poor dad had his wife recovering in surgery, his daughter in a helicopter flying to another city and his dad in ICU healing from a heart attack. Somehow through all of that, he and his twin brother beat the helicopter to Wichita. He still to this day says he wasn’t going to let me be there without him.

I was admitted to the NICU and was assigned to the only pediatric surgeon in the state of Kansas at that time. My father was watching the hours go by and still no surgery. At 15 hours old, my father approached the nurse’s station and pleaded for them to help me. He knew that if I didn’t have surgery very soon, I would never make it. The nurse assured him that I was on the list. Just as my father returned to my incubator, the doctor walked up. He said very few words and walked away. My father was livid.

Thankfully, I made it through my first surgery without much complications.