My Long Journey

Hello everyone, my name is Abigail See I’m 8 years old, I live in Jesup Iowa with my wonderful family and pets. I’d like to tell you about my long journey I started when my mommy decided to bring me into the world by slipping on the ice at our home. After my mommy slipped on the ice her tummy started to hurt her and my daddy and grandma took her to Allen hospital to get checked out. As soon as we got there they rushed to my mommy’s aid. The doctors and nurses made the choice to do an emergency C-section. I was born at 1lb 9oz and I was 13 inches long. My mommy didn’t get to see me for 3 days because as soon as they got me out they sent me to Iowa City Children’s Hospital. They were the best people to get sent to. My daddy and his mommy came with me to the children’s hospital to be with me. I was known as “Girl See” because they didn’t know my name until they talked to my mommy and daddy. Then the day my mommy got to come be with me is the day all the fun began.

There was all sorts of doctors and nurses running in and out of my room but it was a wonderful thing knowing they were keeping track of everything I was doing and checking on my health 24 hours a day. The doctors and nurses said I was on the preemie roller coaster. Me and my family spent 96 days at the children’s hospital and they did all different types of tests on me from checking on my brain growing and making sure my heart was ticking like it should. They found a whole in my heart when I was there and they tried one type of medicine and it made me retain water and then they tried a different drug and it worked in my favor and closed the whole. After I was sent home around good Friday I ended up going back to the children’s hospital 3 weeks after being home for a double hernia surgery. I was on oxygen the whole time until I turned a year old. That was a lot of work having to carry around the oxygen and the monitors but the specialist that I was seeing finally took me off it. My mommy and daddy were so happy. My luck was getting better. Then my Pediatrician Dr. Jody VanSickle was concerned because I was not walking yet. So, I had a lot of x-rays on my hips and my legs. With all of this coming on they figured out that I was going to need therapy. I eventually had to get braces for my legs that I must wear all the time. I go to therapy once a week for an hour and I work very hard to get my legs to work better.

This year we went to Juliet Children’s hospital in Minnesota where they did a physical and watched me walk up and down the hallway and the two doctors that watched diagnosed me with a mild case of cerebral palsy. This was another leap I had to take to my journey in life.