My son Hayden graced our lives on January 26,

My son, Hayden, is a true story about the author's grandson
written by his mother

My son, Hayden, graced our lives on January 26, 2002. He was born with a clubfoot, but he appeared very healthy considering he was born nearly 8 weeks early. We soon became a family that I have always had a great deal a sympathy for. We had just become the parents of a child with birth defects.

In the beginning, we were all unaware of just how severe some of these were. To his outward appearance he looks pretty normal. However some doctors have disagreed on that! He does show some outward signs like lower set ears, pinna abnomalities or ear creases, simian creases in both hands. All of which are consistent traits with a child with Down Syndrome. Hayden does not have Downs' however. When he started having problems feeding, we started finding out just what Hayden and ourselves were going to have to deal and learn to live with for the rest of his life.

He was first diagnosed with renal agenesis or only having 1 kidney. As time went on throughout the year, we found the following:

1. Hemihypertrophy
2. Atrial Septal defects
3. Aortic branch deformities
4. Beckwith-Weidemann Syndrome
5. bi-furcated lung/W PAD
6. Horner's Syndrome
7. Mild 9,11,13 factor def.
8. Mild sacral defect
9. Mild Caudal Regression
10 Arachnoid cyst in brain
11 Arachnoid cyst t1-t11
12 Focal seizures
13 Pyloric Stenosis

It's quite overwhelming, I know. But every one that has ever seen Hayden can not believe that these conditions go with him. Until they, of course, see the medical records.

He is 14 months old now, and in the past 2 months he has had some severe complications with these conditions. He got an infection in his gastrointestonal tract, which ended up causing Diverticulitis. He was given a run of antibotics and we thought all was well. We were wrong. About a week after he took the antibotics, he woke one morning with the appearance of a toad. He was very swollen and was running a fever.

I know by now that there are very few things that will cause water retention like that. I took him to the hospital where he was immediately admitted with suspicion of pre-renal failure. The next day we found out that was indeed what had happened. He was given medication and released 4 days later.

We now know the cause of this problem other than just having the one kidney. We found out that like so many people with kidney disease, he can not eliminate such things as potassium, sodium, or calcium from his body. The doctors and the American Kidney people have both given a list of hazardous foods to those with kidney disease. These are the following: dairy, bananas, oranges, potatos, tomatoes, just to name a few. Doctors or American Kidney would have a more precise list.