Brooke Beecham

Hello Everyone! My name is Kristen Brooke, but I go by Brooke. I was just old enough to talk when I learned that phrase, my parents had said it so many time I just thought that is what you were suppose to say when you saw a new doctor or nurse. I am 20 years old and I live in Parsons TN. I was born with a diaphragmatic hernia which affected the left side of my diaphram. My intestines and spleen and several other organs pushed through the hole and formed where my left lung was suppose to be. It was the size of about a quarter or half dollar. All of those things forming in the left side of my chest cavity it pushed my heart and spine to the right which decreased the development of my right lung! My mother and father did not know I was going to be born with cdh and neither did my mom's doctor or my doctor. I was born at 2:03am on July 16th, 1987 I was never weighed they think I weighed about 8 lbs and they didn't even estimate my length. When I was born I imediately began to go into respiratory distress, and they put a ventilator tube down my throat in order to stabilize me for my first helicopter ride! My mother had to have a C-section so she was still under the anethesia when she got to see me for a grand total of about 3 minutes before they put me on the helicopter to go a couple hudred miles to a university hospital. They airlifted me from Oxford MS to Jackson MS, I had my first surgery when I was 9 hours old, which was performed by a Dr. Richard Miller! The doctors did not give me any hope at all, they told my mother and father that I would die without surgery and they couldn't promise ANYTHING with surgery! Little did they know I was a fighter and I wanted to live!