It occurred to me that many people don’t really know much about Mikie’s past. I have said before that the best piece of advice I can offer to anyone is to keep a health journal on the child. I’ll take some time to attempt to put some of Mikie’s history down in type.

Mikie came into the world on March 2, 1973.  He was born in Grand Rapids Michigan at Saint Mary’s hospital, the same hospital that I was born at and where I received treatment for club feet when I was a little guy. If you’ve seen Mikie or any pictures of him you know he has red hair, what’s left of it.  Though I don’t have very much hair left, what I do have is definitely not red.  My dad had red hair as well as two brothers and two sisters. Mikie was also born with club feet.  He had another common problem, he had yellow jaundice.  They put him under a light for a few days and he was good to go.  Lorraine and Mikie soon rejoined dad in Columbia SC.

We noticed that Mikie was a pretty fussy baby, and things didn’t start out so good.  We were poor, so we took him to a clinic for follow-up on his feet and other things.  First time there they told Lorraine that Mikie’s head looked large and he was probably blind and would be retarded.  They measured it and said come back in two weeks.  We headed right to a private doctor for another opinion.  He made an appointment for us at the medical hospital in Charleston and they confirmed that Mikie had hydrocephalus and that a shunt should be performed immediately.  We came back to Columbia and though I don’t remember all the details, I know it was done but done too late.  I remember Dr. Weston telling us that Mikie had cysts on his brain.  I remember asking how long he would live and him saying that we just couldn’t know.  The shunt did have immediate results, we now had a happy baby, though quite blind.  It was not his eyes, but it was the brain that didn’t get the message from the eyes.

That’s enough for now!