MRI result

From Mum and Dad:

Arthur had his MRI last Tuesday and today we went to Chelsea to hear the results. We knew he would have brain damage - he had such a massive bleed into the right side of his brain when he was a few days old - some damage was inevitable. And we had been prepared for the worst.

He does have damage. There are two different things going on. One relates to the bleed itself - he has localised damage from the bleed, but not too much. He is likely to have left sided cerebral palsy but probably mild. They predict full finger movement but just not spot on. More drummer than violinist.

The second issue is a more diffuse and more serious problem. He has reduced volume of white matter and a thin corpus callosum, which is probably related to his prematurity and chronic lung disease. No, it didn't mean much to us either. But we were told it means that he is likely to have a degree of cognitive impairment, and that this is likely to be towards the less good end of the spectrum. Our consultant was at pains to point out that nothing is certain, and that any deficit subtracts from wherever he would have started from. Hopefully he would have been fairly bright, and so will still be ok. We asked whether Arthur was likely to need special schooling and the answer was no; we should plan for a normal school. So we will.

Arthur himself has been just fine today and looking super-cute.  He shrugged off his 3rd set of immunisations this afternoon. We'll go on doing our very best by him.

Love and thanks to all,
Simon and Amy