Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Sharing Good News

In high school, my best friends were Karsee Taylor, Beth Cizek, and Laura Heintz.  We called ourselves the 4-some. We were obsessed.  And obnoxious.  4-some forever!  Anyway, they each have kids now, and we're all over the place (our last hoorah was at the 10th year reunion, in '03! pic: me-blond, Laura, Kars, Beth, & Laura's daughter Sophia). 
Laura and I reconnected in nyc a few years ago and I've been able to keep up with her through her husband's blog. Laura (who is fabulous, by the way) has two children, the youngest (Ira) who was born without a diaphragm. I'll probably botch this, but here's my understanding of what has happened.  Without a diaphragm, Ira's lungs didn't develop fully (due to organs gettin' up in the lung-spot) and Ira had to be put on a respirator at birth. He spent the first year of his life in the ICU and a machine was breathing for him. Eventually he moved to a vent and just recently has been weaned off the vent (great news!). He is primarily fed through a tube in his stomach (because of problems swallowing) and has a trach. Today Laura and her husband Joe shared a video of Ira learning to talk with the trach. 

He's doing really well and I am so happy for them. The video was great to watch so I'm passing it along. Here's the link to the video of Laura and Ira (give it time to load). Enjoy!

2 comments:

Bigdaddy said...

Finally found some time to look over all your photos. Very nice pictures showing the "color" of Providence.

Big Daddy

Laura said...

Hey You,
What a fun surprise to see a pic of all of us! And how sweet of you to feature Ira. A, thank you so much for keeping up with my family. It means so much.

I didn't know you had a blog until tonight and I was quickly reminded of how creative you are! How's RI? What are you doing for x-mas? You won't be in St. Louis by any chance?

xo Laura