Taking baby steps to recovery
Child regaining brain function after nearly fatal loss of oxygen01:49 PM CST on Sunday, December 10, 2006
Aaliyah Gardner was just 9 months old when she took her first steps last Christmas Eve.
"She was very advanced for her age," said her mother, Amber Gardner of Mesquite.
The walking has since been replaced by a crawl, and it's been almost a year since Aaliyah uttered a recognizable word.
Yet Ms. Gardner now believes her daughter is more than precocious. She calls Aaliyah a miracle.
About three weeks after Aaliyah's tenuous walk of independence, she came down with an ear infection.
The infection brought on a fever, which spiked, sending her into a seizure.
At the hospital, efforts to help her breathe weren't working. A crew from Children's Medical Center Dallas was summoned to transfer her to that more specialized facility.
But during the process of replacing a plugged breathing tube, Aaliyah went into cardiac and respiratory arrest.
"It was something that I never would have thought I would experience, especially from something as simple as an ear infection," Ms. Gardner said.
In all, Aaliyah went more than two hours without adequate oxygen. Medical records show that an emergency room doctor at Children's told Ms. Gardner it was likely her daughter wouldn't survive. The records state that Aaliyah's brain suffered devastating trauma. One doctor wrote that the extent of the damage couldn't be clearly mapped but that the girl was comatose and unresponsive to light. Her words, mobility and vision were gone.
Ms. Gardner blames the first hospital for compounding the trauma and is involved in a lawsuit against that hospital. Doctors from Children's Medical Center Dallas, which is not a target of the lawsuit, weren't available to comment.
Ms. Gardner gives full credit to therapists who have helped Aaliyah's brain regain function.
"As much as I try to work with her, I don't have the knowledge that they have," the mother said. "Her recovery is because of them."
On first introduction, it's hard to tell anything is wrong with the bubbly child. Perched on her mother's hip, she sips from a bottle and smiles. On the floor, she crawls toward forbidden objects and turns to scowl when told "No."
For weeks after being released from the hospital, Aaliyah seemed to languish. But when she discovered how to push herself from her stomach to her back, her mother saw hope.
"I called everyone I knew" to tell them the news, Ms. Gardner said. "At that point, I knew that she wanted to do more than just lay there."
Vision therapist Kristie Smith soon joined the recovery team.
"When I got called to see the baby, they said she's pretty much like a vegetable. She can't see anything," Ms. Smith said.
"I've never seen that happen to a baby and this be the result," Ms. Smith said of the girl's progress. "This is such a miracle baby. She's just so strong-willed. She knows what she wants."
The mother went from cringing at the thought of therapists pushing Aaliyah toward physical tasks too quickly to asking them to work with her more.
"There were many times I was like, 'I can't even be in the room with the therapists, because they're being mean to her,' " Ms. Gardner said. "At first, it bothered me a lot. Then I realized: If you have high goals, then you'll have high results."
The milestones have been more rewarding because of the effort, she said. It took months of work before Aaliyah could crawl again. She now pulls herself up with furniture and attempts to walk, though her feet fold underneath her.
The vision therapist is optimistic that the young girl is beginning to distinguish colors. Still, there are days when it seems as if the regained vision is gone again. The damaged part of the brain will never be like new, Ms. Smith said.
"She's always going to have issues with a lot of clutter when she's tired," she said. Her brain "won't process really well."
And though she coos sweetly at moments, frequent bouts of irritability are a lasting effect of the brain trauma, Ms. Gardner said.
"She still physically looks the same, but being her mom, I can really tell a difference," Ms. Gardner said. "She had a smile that was irreplaceable. ... She still smiles, but you really have to work for it."
The mother said she's learned never to give up hope.
"My faith, honestly, was very questioned during all of this," she said.
When pastors came to counsel her, "I didn't even want to talk to them," she said. "I knew they were going to tell me, 'Just believe.'
"I didn't want to believe at the time. I was mad," Ms. Gardner said. "I lost faith, but everybody else kept praying.
"Now I'm praying, too."
E-mail ksanderson@dallasnews.com