First Year

From behind the wall of an incubator, I saw Mitch for only a few minutes before the special neonatal ambulance whisked him away to St Mary's hospital in Madison. The next morning, when I finally got to St Mary's, I saw him once before the neurosurgeon operated to close the open lesion on his back. He was laid on a pillow on my lap. When the nurse pulled back the sterile dressing to show me his back, I felt faint. Seventy-five percent of his back was an open, oozing wound. The edges of incomplete vertebra, a half-formed spinal cord, blood vessels, muscle, tendon and ligaments were visible. What a shocking thing for a twenty-two year old new Mom to see. I could not image how the surgeon would ever find enough skin to close such a huge lesion. But his extraordinary neurosurgeon, Dr. Woodford was able to do so during a 6 hour in surgery.


In the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit), despite the dire predictions, he seemed amazingly healthy. At 8 pounds, 4 ounces, he weighed more than his 3 room mates combined. Those poor preemies, with their immature nervous systems, startled, quaked, and cried much of the time. Mitch was like a little Buddha, his cheeks plumped from the butterfly IV in his scalp, his gaze calm and interested, his bed an island of serenity in a sea of irritable, unsettled babies.

Cool wash cloths were used frequently to try to lower his fever
which ran as high as 106F.

Like many babies with spina bifida, Mitch developed hydrocephalus and had a shunt placed at 13 days to drain the excess fluid from his brain. Before a dad named John Holter invented the first working shunt, most babies with spina bifida and hydrocephalus died from untreated hydrocephalus. Read more about the Holter shunt and the amazing story behind it at these links:

• The Father's of Invention 
• John Holter, brain engineer
• Reader's Digest - A Father's Last-Chance Invention.

When Mitch was 3 1/2 weeks hold, he was released from the hospital. He was home two days before we had to rush him back to the hospital to have his shunt replaced.  It became clogged with protein. Between shunt replacements, ear tubes, a hernia repair, tendon surgery, and mysterious illness marked by a high daily fever, Mitch spent much for the first year of his life in the hospital. Many of the nurses became good friends.