To all my moon buds

[gazric]

Hi guys, some of you may have noticed that i’ve not been around for a while, and some of you know the reasons why... moving house, new job, Isabelle becoming pregnant, all time consuming, tiring stuff, but all part of life’s rich pageant as they say.

I would respectfully suggest that any moonies of a particularly sensitive nature stop here…..no joke...

So, it’s almost the middle of April and Isa and I are getting ready for the upcoming event (baby due 13th May). Most of the getting ready involves Isa shouting and me going “yes dear”, but hey, by this time there is so much oestrogen in the air I can take it like a woman!
After a hectic weekend, I’m back at work and Isa is at home taking care of our boy Yolace, who, at 8 years old, has been taken out of school because of his inability to relate to the teachers, his classmates, and just about anything else that isn’t a dinosaur. I come home to the usual mayhem of dogs, cats, autistic boy, teenage angst girl, and heavily pregnant wife and sigh... ”everything alright darling?”, expecting the usual tirade of which dog’s done what to which cat, only to find Isa sitting down with a worried look on her face…apparently she can’t feel the baby moving anymore, and, although this is not unusual in late pregnancy when the baby’s turned and engaged.. Her instinct tells her this is something else. We pass a fretful night and in the morning I go off to work and Isa says she’ll call the hospital. It’s April 15.

The midwife says to come down for a monitoring session asap, so I come back from work and we drive down to the valley where the hospital sits with it’s backdrop of Mont blanc, glaciers and ski slopes; we go in, up to maternity, and Isa gets hooked up to some bleeping, wavy line making thing, and we hear the baby’s heart beating….relief!, so everything’s ok then, it’s a false alarm? “Wait there a moment” say’s the midwife, and leaves the room, Isa and I look at each other and at the monitor, at that moment Isa has a mild contraction and we see the baby’s heart rate drop in half, recovering quickly after the contraction is over, is that normal? I’m no expert, but even I can figure out that, if he’s that distressed by a mild contraction, what’s the labour going to do to him? A consultation with the paediatrician, and another hours scanning confirms my fears, he’s not happy in there, and the decision is made for an emergency caesarean. My son, Clovis-Marius is brought into the world at 15.58, cleaned up and put into an incubator. An hour or so later and I’m told that Clovis’s problem is that he’s still trying to breath as if he’s in the womb so his blood oxygen levels are low, requiring artificial respiration, something that the hospital in France is not geared up for in terms of intensive care and 24/24 nursing. The decision is made to send him to the university hospital of Geneva (HUG), and he leaves that night.
Although Isa is still in recovery from the caesarean she comes with me to Geneva on the Thursday and Clovis is doing a lot better, almost breathing on his own, my eyes go from my son to the monitor and back at least 30 times a minute however just to be sure. We are told that a scan will be done of the brain because he had a convulsion just after birth, and the echo graph isn’t clear enough to tell anything, they’ll give us the results that night. I drive Isa back to the hospital in France and I drive home to look after the other two kids. Isa calls me late in the evening... “The scan has revealed a small lesion”, she tells me, “It’s because of the convulsion” I say, and we make our arrangements to go back to Geneva in the morning.
Back to Geneva, Isa is in a lot of pain after the operation and shouldn’t really be wandering about the country but I’m the last one to try to keep a mother from her child, we check on Clovis (better and better) and we’re summoned into a conference room by a Swiss doctor. He asks us how much we know, we say just what we were told the night before. He gives us a resume of Clovis’s breathing difficulties and tells us that he is making a great recovery from that... we are pleased… he hesitates… I know something else is coming…. And come it does.
“When we did the scan we were frankly amazed” he says, “from the echography we knew there was some disparity in the brain but what we found was astonishing, very rare” I’m starting to feel as if I’m in some kind of film. “Sometime within the last week in the womb Clovis suffered an attack, and then again just after the birth. The scan confirms that in fact the carotid artery on the right side of the head is blocked, as a result no blood, or very little has gone to the right hemisphere of his brain, the damage is to ALL of the right hemisphere and to all intents and purposes it’s gone.” He goes on talking even though Isa and I are in a fog of shock, he tells us the damage will manifest itself in (worst case) total paralysis of the left side, with maybe the sight and hearing on that side affected as well. I won’t go into detail regarding the rest of that day, we spend it with Clovis, and to be honest, there’s nothing to tell that there is anything out of the ordinary, maybe a slight tendency to forget his left arm, but then, that’s only if you’re looking for it. A few days later two department heads in the hospital give us another briefing, one that leaves us much more hopeful for the future. They tell us that, although the main vessel is blocked, there are two other circulatory systems apart from the carotid that have kept working and the core functions on that side should be ok. They tell us that a baby’s brain is not fully formed until 2 years and we’ve got that long to try and train the left side of the brain to take over some of the functions of the right, stimulation in all its forms and for all the senses, plus physiotherapy is the order of the day. As well as this, Geneva are putting together a team of specialists who will help Clovis, and us, over the first three months. We leave Geneva almost smiling, it’s going to be hard work, full-time work, but at least we’ve got a chance to do something. After a week in Geneva Clovis is well enough to go back to France, and a week later he is well enough to come home.
And that’s about where we are now, Clovis-marius is doing amazingly well, all reflex tests are ok, and for the moment, everything seems to be working as it should, Isa says that maybe the only part that he’ll lose will be my bullshit! Anyway, he’s gorgeous, unnaturally robust for a baby who’s gone through all this and shouldn’t even be born for another week; and we love him….nuff said
I know this shouldn’t really be in the forum, my apologies Vax, but I consider you all friends and I know I won’t be able to keep going over this in shout. Anyway part of his aural stimulation is and will remain AM, so it’s nearly relevant! I’ll be in to say hi as often as I can.
Love to you all ... G