This is the hardest story to tell, but I know it like the back of my hand.
After having two friends ask me today what Andy's medical issues are, I felt it was time to write it out.
Andy was born limp, due to being deprived of oxygen during a prolonged labor. Within 2 hour of birth he had a seizure and was transferred to Bellevue because they could do a cold cap. Andy did not qualify for the cold cap procedure. An MRI scan showed mild to moderate damage to his posterior internal capsule, which is a portion of the brain that runs through the basil ganglia. The EEG scan confirmed the seizure, but with where the activity was located it did not correlate with the brain damage. They do not know the cause of the seizures. The next day he had another seizure, and they began the narcotic Phenobarbital. They then did a 3 day video EEG where he was attached to the EEG for 72 hours. While on the medication there was no activity. A week later when the medicine wore off, they did an EEG and saw seizure activity in the brain that had not had the time to manifest into a physical seizure. He was placed back on the medication but in a lower therapeutic range. The initial dosage had him asleep for the first 10 days of his life. He was in the NICU a total of 16 days. The last 6 days had been due to him being too tired to wake for feedings from the medication and needed a feeding tube.
He is still perfect, and he has just started mimicking the sounds that I make.
