In the Beginning...

     I decided I would jump on the bandwagon and become one of those "bloggers". Unfortunately, my blog won't be about cooking my way through Julia Child's Cookbook...although that would be entertaining! I think I am more of a Paula Deen kind of girl anyway...maybe my next blog adventure will be "Cooking with Paula Deen".  I would definitely knock that blog out of the park and most likely gain 50lbs in the process. As long as her recipes don't call for oleo or lemon zest, we are good. So there we have it...Blog #2 is already in the works! But back to Blog #1, which I haven't even successfully completed, much less started.
     So where do I start? Most of you know somewhat of the story of Baby Rhett, but I will go ahead and include the "Cliff's Notes" for those who are clueless. Let's rewind to April 22, 2010...Baby Rhett was born! Rhett Henry Wyss arrived weighing in at a whopping 8.4 lbs and 20" long. Go ahead and say it..."That was a big baby!" Tell me about it!  I was there! So he was born, life was perfect as we knew it.  We were the parents of two beautiful little boys Reid & Rhett...yes even their names were perfect together. We were our own little story right out of the story book. Then at 11:30 that night a nurse came in and busted our little perfect family bubble. She rained on my parade and basically was the beginning of what was going to be a million questions we had that would never be answered. Here is how it all began, when the ICU Nurse said...

"We were giving Rhett a bath and noticed something wrong, but we don't know what it is."

I will save us all a little time and sum up what the conclusion was to "what was wrong" with Rhett. He had a little bump on his tailbone that had a small indention on it. After two ultra-sounds and a MRI, Rhett was diagnosed with a tethered spinal cord, here is a link to help describe what that means.

           http://www.healthline.com/galecontent/tethered-spinal-cord-syndrome

     Basically, his spinal cord is attached to a fatty tumor and it should hang freely. It is related to spinal bifida only in that they are both developmental issues with the spinal cord. Does he have spinal bifida...no. How did this happen? I will go ahead and save you from asking THE QUESTION....Yes, I took my pre-natal vitamins. Did I forget a day or two...most likely. I was pregnant and it wasn't uncommon for me to forget to put shoes on, and I am human...everyone forgets things time to time. Tethered cords have nothing to do with folic acid or vitamins, so I'm told. No one really knows what causes it or what goes wrong. There is not one day that goes by that I don't wonder what I did wrong when I was pregnant. Was there something I could have avoided...like the microwave? I don't know & I guess we will never know. Every time I hear someone ask "what causes this?", I just know one day a doctor is going to say "You were a careless pregnant lady who inhaled too much pine sol!"
     When we received the phone call from our pediatrician confirming Rhett's diagnosis, he seemed optimistic. He felt that as active as Rhett is, that this would be an issue we would tackle later down the road. We were told all along that Rhett's case was not severe and he would show no signs of this affecting him in the short term. We were assured he would be doing everything a baby without a tethered spine would do...and he is. Rhett is a strong & very active little baby. Some of the main issues caused by a tethered cord are no feeling or movement in legs and/or feet, and problems with bladder and bowel control. Rhett has always had great movement in his legs/feet, so no one was too concerned as far as movement was concerned. As far as bladder & bowel control, there is no way to tell in a newborn & that is usually something that is affected later in life. So based on the milestones Rhett was achieving, the first reading of his MRI & what the doctors were relaying to our pediatrician, we were told surgery would be something we would worry about later on and where and how his spine was tethered was in our favor. His cord was tethered low on his back...the lower down it is, the less that is affected. We were told to schedule an appointment with the neurosurgeon and we would come up with a game plan and go from there. So the appointment was made, and Aug 18th we would have a game plan and hopefully some answers to all our questions and hopefully we would be getting our storybook life right back on track...things were looking up.
     So after our first appointment yesterday with the Neurosurgeon, I decided I would blog about our experience with Baby Rhett. It is an easy way for us to keep everyone up-to-date with what is going on with Rhett & what is also going on in our crazy life! I complain about "the crazy", but we all know nobody in this family would be happy if there was one ounce of sanity around here! I feel like I need to add a disclaimer to this blog as well. I am sure at some point throughout this whole process I will in some way offend or piss someone off. I will not make apologies for this blog. If you do not like what I write in my blog, you are more than welcome to stop reading it, burn it or print it off and use it as toilet paper...it makes no difference to me. So with that said...welcome to our family blog!