Not the best of beats....

Well the past few months have been a bit of a nightmare, in fact… I can honestly say they’ve been the worst few months of my life. I’ve been lucky so far in my 35 years, nothing truly disastrous has ever happened. My family is healthy, I’ve never really wanted for much and always been comfortable.

I’ve mentioned previously that Shell is pregnant with our 2nd child. In January we went along to the hospital for a 22 week routine scan that found……

“something we are not sure about… it’s probably nothing”.

We were asked to go back again a week later and “just make sure”. A week later the problem was still there and we were referred to a specialist in Birmingham for a detailed 3D scan. After this we were taken into a little room and told that there were a few problems they had found with the baby. A problem with the kidneys, a problem with the fluid spaces in the brain and a problem with the development of a part of the brain called the cerebellum. They said that taken individually each of these problems may not be too serious but taken together they added up to say that something was wrong somewhere.

We immediately had lots of tests taken to try and identify what the issue was, tests for chromosomal problems like Downs Syndrome etc… and an agonising 3 week wait to get the results which eventually came back clear. To this day they do not know what has caused these problems.

Shell also had to have 2 MRI scans to check the other parts of the babies brain were developing, at one point it was touch and go as to if there was going to be a baby or not. It goes without saying that poker has not been a priority during the past month or two.

Fortunately, it now looks like there is going to be a baby! However, we are still left with the problems with the baby’s brain that will not change and can not be cured.

The kicker comes with the prognosis; it’s so wide you could drive a bus through it. They don’t really understand the impact this is going to have. Some people have similar problems and go through their entire lives in relative normality and some are severely handicapped. Throw into the mix the wide range of physical and learning difficulties in between these two extremes and you are left with just about any outcome.

The odds of such a problem occurring are huge… greater than 40,000-1 ….. Not the best of beats is it? Shell is due mid May, and while our expectations of what this baby will eventually achieve with it’s life have been altered severely we’ve all got our fingers crossed that everything is going to be ok…. or if we are being honest … not that bad.