Story submitted by Lesley Keen on October 26, 1999 at 09:53:14:
Lesley Keen is 34, from OXFORD ENGLAND.
Family:husband Steve 3 children Jessie Beth and Daniel
My son was born August 1997. He was 10lb 12oz at birth and he was a shoulder dystocia birth which means his head was born but his shoulders were stuck ,due to poor manipulation and lack of medical intervention, the traction on Daniels head resulted in a severe brachial plexus injury. I myself am a midwife and realised that night that Daniel had sustained an erbs palsy , but I had always thought that they recovered spontaniously with some exercise to stop contracters.
How wrong I was .We went weekly for physio,still thinking that everything would be fine only to be told when Daniel was 12 weeks old that we needed a Doctors referal ,I asked why and was told that it was because we had not seen one before, yet again I was quite happy with this explanation.
We were sent an appointment from a plastic surgeon, well you can imagine I was a little surprised by this but we turned up that is my mother and my 3 children , thinking we were going to get a progress report,when the surgeon started telling me aboat surgery he wanted to puform on Daniel. I was devestated. The surgery consisted of removing nerves from both legs leaving scars from the back of his knees down to his ankles ,then these nerves were grafed onto the damaged nerves in his neck leaving him with another scar onhis neck. He would then have to wear a neck support so that he could not move his head and have his right arm stapped to his side until the wounds healed.This was a terrible shock the surgeon was and is a lovely man and could see that I had not seen any of this coming . He said we should go back to see him in 2 weeks with any questions we may have and in the mean time he would send me the research on the surgery. He was true to his word and we got the papers which were informative if a little frightening, it was only then that I really realised that Daniels arm would never be "normal".
A month later Daniel had his sugery ,I can hinestly say it was the worst day of my life as he was in theater for 6 hours altogether, he reappeared covered in bandages and with a morphine infusion. You should have seen how difficult it was to breastfeed my 6 month old baby while he was lying flat on his back , little things like that had not occured to us . After 5 days we were home and starting to get on with our lives again.He is now 2 years old and a star we have very regular physio and Daniel usually quite enjoys this.His arm has come on remarkably and who is to know how he will fair in the future , but I do know he is a determined little boy and nothing is going to stop him doing what he wants.
I will end this by saying that if any of you are waiting for or contamplating surgery you just have to go for it and give your lovely children every chance they can get.It is really worth it.
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