hi dsummersill:

welcome to wonderful therupetic world of blogging. I am so glad cayden is doing so well even after suffering stroke at such a young age. what a fighter that young boy is. give him lot of hugs from his AshaAunty

hope to see you around more often in our blogworld & our chatroom. I stroked at age 34 which left me paralysed on my left side & I never thought I would find joy in living again, but after 7 years on this stroke journey I find stroke as just bump in our life's journey. I realized there is life after stroke life is still good just little different, but there is good life after stroke possible. I am sure for cayden it will be much easier journey cause that's what he knows & that will his new normal. hope to see you more often

Asha

(now 41 year old survivor)

Thank you Asha,

He is a fighter!!! Today he showed us for the first time that he actually knows how to undress himself and dress himself!!!!! We knew he could do his pants but I had no idea that he could do his shirt. We are trying to get a special tool so he can button up his shirts and the other night he showed me he could snap is clothes that had snaps on them. These milestones he has hit pretty much on target but his walking and the infant milestones took him longer to achieve.

Hi dsummersill, I’m Elondie aka Yolanda. I am a caregiver to my now 8 year old granddaughter, Tootie. We were shocked when the neurologist told us Tootie had a stroke. Tootie, was 10 months old when she had 2 strokes and 3 weeks later had another stroke.

Since we had no idea an infant could have a stroke, one of our objectives remains to educate others about Pediatric Stroke. When we left the hospital we were told Tootie would never be able to do anything, however, we were determined to find any and all treatments to improve her quality of life.

In addition to her traditional therapy (OT, PT, Speech), Tootie does Aquatics and Hippotherapy as well. My Tootie is also in Challenger Little League, Upward(Basketball and Cheerleading) and has participated in Special Needs Ballet and Gymnastics.

I welcome you to the best board for Stroke Survivors, Caregivers, and Professionals. You will find the folks in here extremely helpful, intelligent, and compassionate. I’m sure our community will welcome you with open arms and friendships will quickly establish.

Congratulations to Cayden and you as well for all his accomplishments!

Hi Yolanda,

I know what ya mean. We never heard about strokes in infants until Cayden had his. Of course we didnt know he had one until he died on us 20 min. after he was born. They put him on two different antiseizure drugs and two days after he was born they did his first MRI.

He has been seizure free now for over a year now and off his meds. He is of course so far as they can tell only 2 yrs developmentally delayed so we are now dealing with the terrible twos. He no longer is in OT, or PT tho he still has partial paralysis in his right side but nothing they can fix with PT.

On top of all this he sees a chiropractor every month. In fact the chiropractor has done wonders for him. He walks with out a limp now and he started using his right hand more and can actually use it to throw a ball. We work with him at home but I dont know if he will ever gain full use of the right side.

People are actually surprised when they see Cayden that anything is really wrong with him he looks so normal and that really irritates me because they think he can do things others can and it causes him to get hurt. I dont know how many times my inlaws have choked him by giving him food he couldnt eat.

The Nuerologist is afraid that Cayden will have another one here shortly but his chiropractor thinks hes safe now that he has been adjusted. But the one thing that really scares me is that he will end up with epilepsy. The seizures he used to suffer scared the day lights out of me....He would turn blue within seconds!!!!

Dyan

I think I can say with surety this is the youngest stroke survivor to ever be discussed on Stroke Net Blogs. If I'm wrong please set me straight? Again a doctor has stated the little fellow may not survive. Of course we don't know what assumption he made that statement on this infant.

I pray he doesn't have another stroke in his lifetime. I'm so glad he is doing fine now! He's running that is something I can't do after nearly 8 years so far. All the praise in the world to you and Cayden.

Fred!

Hi Fred,

I couldnt really tell ya if he is the youngest spoken here but he is pretty young. The doctor didnt believe he would live because he died on us 4 times that night and they didnt know if they could have him come back if he died again. They realized that he was dying because he was having seizures and the doctor really didnt want us to get our hopes up too much.

After he got out of the NICU on his actual due date March 3, 2007 the doctor said that he had seen worse brain damage than Cayden has and they didnt show any ill effects from it and no one could tell they were brain damaged. Cayden doesnt show too much ill effects from his strokes except the partial paralysis of his right side and him being developmentally delayed.

I really need to get a video on here to show how he runs it is so darn cute. But the more he does it the better I know he will get. I noticed that the doctors werent wrong when they said that kids are resilient when it comes to strokes and how they recover.

My prayers will be with you that you will continue to recover like my Cayden is......

Dyan