We discussed what to call her and decided on MaKayla Taylor Ellis. Since Allie was named after me, my daughters thought it would be appropriate to do the same for this one – since my middle name is Kay – they came up with MaKayla (Kaylee) – Steve’s middle name is Taylor.
Monday we took Kaylee to see a pediatric surgeon. He diagnosed her with a sacrococcygeal taratoma, which is a tumor that grows in the womb when a master cell goes awry. In other words, when the baby’s body is first being created in the womb, there are cells which can become anything – legs, arms, hair, teeth, etc. – when they are given their assignment, that’s what they become. If one of these cells goes crazy, it starts creating spare parts. Apparently, the tumor is full of these miscellaneous spare parts – it starts out benign, but can become malignant and it will continue to grow which can start putting pressure on other systems, such as the bladder, intestines, colon, spinal cord, etc. I now know that the mother was drinking, smoking and doing drugs while she was pregnant, so it is not surprising that these cells went a little crazy. The surgeon said he could perform the surgery here, but was happy to recommend that it be done in the States.
We are attempting to get all of the mother’s paperwork done so we can apply for a passport for the baby. Since this is going to take some time and this baby needs some focused care, my son showed me a small house across the street from his which I could rent for 10,000 pesos/month which is roughly $200.00 in American money. Since I need some space to continue working on the health club and to be organized enough to take care of the baby’s needs, we called Wednesday morning and rented the house.
After securing the house, I took the baby back to the doctor’s complex to have her checked out a little further. Although she was doing much better than she had been the night we picked her up, her chest was still retracting and as I watched it, it became obvious that it was retracting much faster than she was breathing, which made me suspect she might have a hole in her heart which was causing it to work much harder than normal. After visiting with a pediatric cardiologist, she set up a series of tests to see what the extents of Kaylee’s problems were.
By the time we finished with the echocardiogram, it was obvious her problems were much worse than I suspected. She actually showed two large holes in her heart, which, in essence left her with a two-chambered heart instead of four. She also showed only one valve in her heart, so when it opens, it is a one-chambered heart. Along with the heart problems, she has several arterial problems which are contributing to congestive heart failure. She also had pneumonia. The doctor told me there is nothing they can do here for her and suggested I admit her to the hospital where they could just make her comfortable. There is help for her in the U.S., but it will take more time to get her passport, a travel clearance and a visa. Time is the one thing Kaylee does not appear to have a lot of. However, she is still eating well, happy and functioning on her own, so I was not ready to admit her to a hospital in order to start the drugs which would undoubtedly lead to her death.
Needless to say, it was a very emotionally draining day. In my experience, I have seen a lot of amazing things that were supposed to be medically impossible, so, now my question is: Is it possible, with the right nutrients and positive energy, for an infant to finish growing a heart that was not finished correctly in the womb? Of course, all of the experts say it is impossible and maybe they’re right, but, for the time being, all I have is time, so my family has put a box of supplies together with herbs that were generously donated by the Christophers and shipped it off so that it will arrive in a couple of days. Yesterday Kaylee and I moved into our little house and are getting organized so we can do all we possibly can to strengthen her and sustain her until she can get the help she needs.
Obviously, the final chapter of this story cannot be told yet, but I would like to close this segment with this thought: When we were having her tests run, I heard some women talking about her in Tagalog – since I couldn’t understand what they were saying, I asked my daughter-in-law. She told me they were talking about how dark the baby is. I asked why that was significant – she told me that the darker you are, the more you are looked down upon by the Filipinos. I said, “You’ve got to be kidding me – Filipinos are brown – it’s not like we’re discussing the question of black versus white – we’re discussing different shades of brown?!? She said, “Yes, here it is very important.” Kaylee’s mother comes from a Filipino mother and a father who is from Trinidad, so she is a dark brown.
In America, white people lay on the beaches trying to get brown – in the Philippines, people treat their skin with whitening agents and bleach to become white. I remember a movie I saw a long time ago where a man from India said, “Allah loves infinite variety.” When are we, as a people, going to realize that we are all human? We all have the same basic needs – water, air, food and love. We all reproduce the same way – we all have the same feelings and desires for our offspring. We all share the same planet. When are we going to see the beauty which comes from variety and recognize that in order to survive, we need to support one another, serve one another, lift each other up and in so doing, lift ourselves, our planet and our universe ?
