Interiano, Joshua Evan

[left:d44efd97cb]http://www.cherubs-cdh.org/Album/new/interiano3.jpg[/left:d44efd97cb]I had filled out the form a week ago and forgot to write his story to you so here it is. My son was born on August 9th, 1997 at Monroe hospital in Florida at 12:32 pm. After 23 hours of labor they delivered him by C-section b/c his heart rate was dropping and they had no idea why (before I gave birth I had gone through 3 ultrasounds and the tech told me he had a cyst on his bladder). After he was born the on call doc discovered (by x-ray) he had a DH and was airlifted to Shands Hospital of FL, where he had a central line put in through his umbilical cord, put on respirator, and I can't remember but there was another tube that went down into his belly, IV and sedative to keep him from moving. He had surgery on the 13th to repair the hernia and it went very well. The doc said he did very well because of the fact that he was full term and was 8lbs. and he had enough skin to repair the hernia without the gortex patch. Everything went in his favor and he also didn't need blood during the surgery. They slowly took him off the vent and then the red tube over the next couple of days and when they did I got to hear my baby cry for the first time. Before that I would see his face looking like he was crying but without any noise how I wanted to hear my beautiful son. I would say 9 days after the repair his blood count dropped and required a blood transfusion on 2 occasions while he was getting better he got a UT infection and then fever an they had done several tests to rule out things. There was spinal taps and lots of blood work done. They showed me his x-rays before surgery and after and told me that his heart was pushed to the right and his stomach, intestines etc. were in his chest cavity so that his left lung was under developed. Our next goal was to try to get him off the IV and get him eating that was a long heart ringing process. To watch him drink 3cc of breastmilk and want more but he just spit it up. He eventually increased his intake and spit up less. When the doc said he could come home they did an oxygen test to see if he could hold his own without the tube in the nose. He did poorly so they kept him longer about a week and tried the test again and he did great they said that he probably did poorly b/c of being sick (fever that came on suddenly). They called me and told me that he would be coming home without oxygen. (The surgeon we had almost always sent babies home on oxygen just to be safe). I went to pick up my son Joshua Evan the next day. I had to take some CPR class before I could take him home and then we were on our way after 42 days at the hospital he was finally coming home!! Since then almost 2 years ago we had our problems of the first year of vomiting up at least half of his food intake but he had another thing on his side his daddies appetite so he gained weight at a steady rate. He also had a lot of respiratory infection and croup 5 times. Now he has respiratory problems only in that season and he can't eat too much stuff that is what I call heavy on the stomach such as to much yogurt (his favorite) things like that. He sees his surgeon every 3 months for a check up and chest x-ray every 6 months to see how every thing is doing so far so good, thank GOD. He is growing physically and mentally on schedule.


Written by Joshua's mom, Beth Interiano (Florida)
1999