Dear Friends!

Hello everyone!
Thank you so much for stopping by our blog! We started this blog to keep everyone informed on our beautiful baby girl, Chloe, and her progress through her recovery. My name is Tiffany. I am Chloe's aunt and your narrator. (: Please bare with me as I try and keep this updated as possible. Currently I'm beginning this blog on the hospital's computer they have located in the ICU for the families. So, pictures and videos will come later when I'm available to be on my computer at home. Thank you so much in advance for your patience.
Through this first post, we're going to tell you about Chloe and the blessing that God placed in our lives. She was born on Friday, July 11, 2008, at 8:50P weighing in at 5lbs. 8oz. From the first moment we saw her, she was breath-takingly beautiful! She was scheduled to go home with her parents, Jeremy and Dominique, on the following Sunday, but on that morning, the nurses saw that Chloe was having unusual eye movement and felt she needed to have some testing done. Upon results from those tests, they learned that Chloe was born with an abnormal brain. The left side of her brain did not develop fully and was causing her to have seizures.
She spent one week in ICU at Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga, TN. Coming home was a great day in our house! It took some getting used to for Jeremy and Dominique. Those middle of the night feedings, changing poopie diapers (which Jeremy loved), and adding one more member to the family was very exciting! Unfortunately, the seizures began to worsen forcing the family to make multiple trip to the ER at T.C. Thompson at Erlanger Hospital. Most trips she was admitted with a stay no shorter than a week. The doctors at Erlanger felt that Chloe was too special of a case for them to handle. So, they gave Jeremy and Dominique a choice of 4 different hospitals with the best neurologists they knew of. Vanderbilt Hospital being one. So, appointments were made to transfer Chloe to Nashville.
September 22, 2008 One monday after just being released from T.C. Thompson, Chloe began have seizures at my parents house in Rock Island, TN. She was on her 30 something seizure for that day, which is alot by the way, and so the family as a whole felt that it was time for Chloe to make her debut at Vanderbilt hospital. They admitted her and kept her for a week. Running tests of their own on her there, and coming to the conclusion that they only way we were going to control these seizures was surgery but they wanted to wait until Chloe was at least 6 months old. The kind of surgery they were going to do for her had yet to be done on a baby of her age. (unsure of the name of surgery at this time. Will inform you guys later)
But, on thursday, November 13, they were heading to Vanderbilt for a doctor's appointment when Chloe began to have a seizure that lasted 45 minutes. That's way to long to be in a seizure. So, instead they took her into the ER where they took care of her. When the neurologist saw her, and her case again, he decided that she needed the surgery sooner than expected and they had an opening on this past tuesday, November 18, 2008. The surgeon spoke with us and said that the risks were high. She could not make it through the surgery, she could have blood transfusions, she could be paralyzed: there were many risks.
But to GOD be ALL the GLORY!!
Tuesday morning started VERY early for us! (: We arrived at the hospital at 6AM where we were allowed to see Chloe one more time. The surgery started at 10:15AM. The only thing we were told every hour was that she was still in surgery and she was doing fine. So, you can imagine the kind of nervousness we had. But as alot of friends have said during that day, no news is good news. So, the only thing that we could do was wait. We played games, we ate lots of food. We laughed, we cried. You name it, we did it. Surgery ended around 8:30PM and the surgeon came and talked with us around 8:45 or 9PM. He told us it went well. Chloe has some bleeding on the brain and so she lost alot of blood at the very beginning. So, during the whole surgery she had 2 blood transfusions. Other than that, the whole surgery was a success. The surgeon said he was happy with everthing that happened with it.
So, at 10:30PM we were allowed to go and see her. That was not a great site to see. She had an incision that started above her right eye on her head all around the back of her head ending above her left ear. We had lots of tears after seeing her, but we know that God had his hands upon her.
So, here we are. Day two after the surgery. She is doing great!! She's had some seizures, but the doctor said that was normal due to the intense surgery. The doctor warned that her right side might be paralyzed but she's moving it!! Slowly, but she is!! The swelling is going down more and more each hour we see her.
Yesterday, the breathing tube came out. Today she's beginning to eat through her mouth again and soon, hopefully, the feeding tube will come out! She's off all IV's except the two main ones. Just don't touch her! She'll tell you to leave her alone! haha But she never cries.
So, thank you to everyone who has been praying for her and my family. We love and appreciate you all!
More to come!!
God Bless!
Tiffany