Health Report

Yes, we brought our little Victor home in April.

Victor's chair is just like Daddy's!

But what have we been doing since then? How is the little man doing?

Victor is doing amazingly well! He is blooming before our eyes into a perfectly normal (well, for an Elliott anyway - we can be a bit eccentric sometimes) little boy!

Our first parenting task upon arriving home was to make sure that he was healthy and ready to grow! We started off taking him to his pediatrician. Then to some specialists. Then to some more specialists. We may have even taken him to some more specialists at that point.

The result of all this was some very good news!

General Health
Victor is a generally healthy little boy. He was skinny. Very skinny. Like, you could see every bone skinny. He was dehydrated, but not too bad. Constipated yes... to a ridiculous degree. But that is what a year long treatment of Miralax is for - this will enable his system to recover from being constipated probably for his entire life.

Eyes
We were told Victor was completely blind, but we knew that he had some sight from observing him. He saw the spoon coming and opened his mouth. He knew the general location of an object, but it was obvious that he had problems with depth perception - he would scoot up to a wall and reach for it when it was still two feet away. It was obvious he was seeing! We took him to a ophthalmologist. The student doctor came in and poor Victor was poked and prodded and had his eyelids clipped open. Almost immediately, he shut himself down - it was all too much. He stop responding to the lights being shone in his eyes, to objects being waved in front of his face, to everything. By the time the real doctor came in, it was hopeless. He gave us the same report we had received from Bulgaria - that Victor could not see a thing. We told him of Victor being overwhelmed by the experience and do you know what he said to us? "I waved Oscar the Grouch in front of him - any kid would have grabbed at that if he saw it." Really? Lay aside the issue of Victor getting overwhelmed and shutting down. Victor has never watched TV in his life, much less Sesame Street. He has never played with toys except a couple of plastic rings. He hates touching anything that is not smooth. And that is your primary evidence that our little boy cannot see?


His first American haircut - boy, did he scream!

So we went to another specialist... this time one who was a super specialist and only dealt with retina detachments. He took one look at Victor playing with his toy on the ground (we had learned our lesson this time - no student doctor giving him a pre-examination!) and said, "Yes, of course he can see." Music to a mama's ears! We then put Victor through the torture of a ultrasound of his eyes (poor boy), but it was worth it - real evidence that he had some vision! His right eye's retina was completely detached but the left eye - only partially detached! We were told that Victor was not a candidate for surgery to reattach the retinas as the scar tissue had become hard with age and would tear the eye if they tried to fix it. However, the doctor said that his vision in his left eye was so good that it is at the level they hope to achieve with surgery! Victor should be able to read very large print and live a rather normal life! We were told to get him glasses (he is also very, very far sighted) and teach him to see! Oddly enough, it turns out that Victor's vision is almost identical to Ian's vision!

Legs
Victor could not stand or walk on his own when we picked him up. His legs were little sticks... adorable but very weak. The orphanage thought that this might be the result of brain damage caused by his traumatic birth. The report in the US? The doctors said that it was completely ridiculous - that his legs were just weak from being confined to a crib and not brain damage - that looked very different indeed, with different symptoms. Victor will run and play someday!

We did get him cute little ankle braces that have made a world of difference! They give him extra stability for his weak little ankles. They are almost hidden inside of his shoes.
Lungs
Victor's oxygen saturation is at 100%, praise God! His lungs are in great condition. They still have some growing to do and he still breathes more rapidly than most, but in a few more years they will be at normal capacity. We give him a steroid inhaler which will help the growth. We still need to be very diligent again lung infections and pneumonia.

Institutional Autism
Victor looks like he has autism - he has some repetitive motion behavior as well as some other similar symptoms. However, the cause of it is very different. Victor did not have much exposure to sensory information other than what he could find in his crib for the longest time. His little mind was starved for sensory information, so he started to create it himself and developed self-simulating habits. This is call institutional autism as he is a frequent condition found in children raised in institutions. Almost all children out of Bulgarian orphanages have it. Now that he has tons of sensory information coming at him, he is using those familiar habits to comfort himself. If he is too overwhelmed by all noise, lights, textures around him, he goes a step forward and withdrawals within himself. As he gets used to his new life that is full of new sensory information, he will learn how to process it and will leave behind his autistic behaviors. We have already seen quite a decrease since picking him up; however, it will probably be a while before he is completely free of them.


Development
Developmentally, Victor has the same skills as an 18-month year old. Some of his skills are even at the 12-month level. For most of these skills, he lacks them because he was never given the chance to learn - he only eats pureed food as he was only ever given pureed food and doesn't know how to chew yet. Some he lacks because no one ever showed him how - he may have had a ball to play with, but there was no one to play catch with. Some he lacks because of his vision - if he cannot see an object, how is he supposed to point to it? Now that he has a family, we will be teaching him these skills. It will probably be a long, hard road, but he has shown himself to be a smart boy and a quick learner. The developmental pediatrician thinks he will be caught up in two years.

So overall, the report on Victor's health was much better than we had been told in Bulgaria. We are excited to watch him grow into a healthy little lad. Yes, he will always have some things like his vision, but there is nothing that cannot be overcome with diligence, patience, and perhaps masses of speech, occupational, and physical therapy. However, we know that the most important factor in his recovery is LOVE. And that is what we are going to give to him!



A snuggle nest of toys and blankets!