well, this is something that i have been wanting to put down for quite some time, i have just had difficulty summarizing everything into a readable length – so here goes… i will try :)

 It is funny to me how many people who do not even realize that i have a son, let alone what he has been through. God is amazing, and it is through my son that i have seen some of His greatest works…

 

Tyy was born on January 24, 2005. i was 19 years old, didnt know the first thing about babies, and i was sooo nervous! hahah, although it is funny how much does come naturally. when he was 6 days old i noticed this breathing thing that he was doing. it was a kind of gaspy thing, and i wasnt sure if i was just being paranoid – or if it was as wierd as it seemed. i called his pediatrician the next morning when it had not gone away, and they told me to bring him in, just to check out since it was his breathing… they were being precautious. it was a good thing that i brought him in as soon as i did, because once we got to the doctors office – he was no longer breathing. they were able to stabilize him at the doctors office, transported him to wake med, and then finally to UNC Hospitals where he was to be for the next four months. All of that happened so fast that i almost didnt catch much of it. i was so dumb-struck, riding up to chapel hill all i could think of was that it was time for him to eat, and… who’s gonna change his diaper…
Once at UNC they were able to better explain to me what exactly happened to Tyy. Co-arc of the aorta, is a condition in which a newborns heart has not developed properly. unfortunately, since this condition is nearly undetectable, most babies die. they are not able to get help quickly enough to save them.

what this does, is causes the heart to have to work hard in order to get blood pumped through that narrow area, thus causing heart failure, which stops everything – including breathing. fortunately for tyy – he had only stopped breathing for less than a couple minutes before we pulled into the parking lot. after the doctors explained all of this to me, which was a LOT to take in at once! lol, they explained that they would need to perform surgery on this area to remove it. wow. 9 days old, and he would be getting HEART surgery! ive never so much as broken  a bone. this was major to me, and i knew that it was more than i could handle. i called Pastor Micah, to ask him to pray for the surgery. little did i know that he was not only going to pray for me, but he came up to the hospital with a whole crew of people from the church to help support me and tyy, and who continued to support us for the next several months that we were there. During tyy’s stay at the hospital he encountered several things… after the surgery, which went well – there was a fluid that was building up around his lungs and heart. this was caused from his lymphnodes in that area not functioning properly, which should have been, if they were functioning properly, filtering that fluid and distributing it through out his body – which is normal. instead it was gathering around his very fragile heart, and tired lungs. his lungs collapsed, he went into congestive heart failure, ng tubes, being intubated more than three times, in and out of picu, tyy has more than a dozen scars from the chest tubes – scars the size around of pencil lead, very tiny – these tubes were stuck through his ribcage draining the fluid for months… tyy had two more surgeries before we were able to leave, the first one – they took out the lymphnode that wasnt working on the right side – when that didnt work, they went in an fused the lung to the chest wall in order to deplete the chest cavity from where the issue was essentially resulting – if there is nowhere for the fluid to go, it must go somewhere. this forced his body to process the fluid and we were soon to be heading home! through this entire ordeal, tyy had been put on a special fat free formula which would help the fluid(composed mostly of lipids) be less heavy so that his body could process it more easily, and had aquired acid reflux, which was mostly… just messy, hahah.

Jeremy, tyy’s dad, had been with me through practically all of this time and was just as new to the parent scene as i was. He, however, did not have… gee? how to explain it, hrmmmm. i dont think there really is any way. he was easily frustrated and did not really grow up being taught how to handle his feelings effectively. looking back, there are so many things that i think… maybe i should have seen, because they seem so clear to me now… but either way – there is no changing the past. on Friday, May 13th – Jeremy called me at work… (he didnt work, and i was moving up in management at Domino’s Pizza – so he kept tyy once he came home from the hospital) …he called me, freaking out – explaining that tyy had ‘fallen off of the couch’ while he had been getting him a bottle from the kitchen, and upon returning found tyy on the floor – not breathing. we had had to take tons of ‘classes’ at UNC including CPR before we were able to leave. Since Jeremy had been so clever as to call me, instead of 911, i called them – he was performing cpr on tyy until the emt arrived. a lady that i grew up with, was actually part of the team that picked tyy up – which was cool… i was able to talk to her on the phone, and she reassured me that everything was ok. — this was my perception= tyy fell off of the couch, had a pretty hard bump, and got the breath knocked out of him, he was on the way to the hospital to be checked out, but he was ok. — when i got to the hospital, this was my reality= tyy’s femur was broken, he had hemoraging of his brain, which was so severe that it had broken his skull with the pressure from his brain swelling, even though his eyes were open, he couldnt see – it was this blank stare- his retina’s had been severely damaged and for the moment anyways, he was blind. he was crying, crying so hard. this cry that didnt cease for the next four days, except for when he would get so exhausted from not having any sleep that it would subside into this very damaged whimper. i was met at the hospital by a sherrif and a person from child protective services who were questioning the events of the day, because what i didn’t really accept, until several days later, was that tyy had been subjected to what is called ’shaken baby syndrome’ and i was pretty much, at the time, a suspect until further investigation was able be done.

wait, let me tell you something that i missed earlier-  when tyy originally stopped breathing and we were at the doctors office, the woman who was at the front desk with her own sick daughter for an appointment, was a woman who used to work at that very office, and who left…. to join EMS. I have no doubt that God placed her there, perfectly for that moment. she was not only very familiar with the office, and where she needed to take tyy, but also with what to do in an “emergency circumstance”. — well, the sherrif who was there to meet and question me at the hospital… was the DARE teacher in my fifth grade class, and the guy from child protection, was someone who i knew and was very well familiar with also. God was watching out the entire time! placing people in my path who would watch out for me, and support me, how GREAT is He?!?

It was a few days later before Jeremy finally ‘confessed’ to what he had done – he threw tyy across the room. it was not the first incident either – tyy had what is called ‘old blood’ on his brain, where it had bled, but not been enough to do more than what is most common with shaken baby syndrome, which is cause flu-like symptoms…. something we had been to the emergency room for not even a week before this, and they told me to go home….. it was nothing.

so now my son was lieing in a hospital room…. again. waiting for a room to open up at UNC so he could be transported back up there. he had a shunt in his head draining the blood… jeremy was put in jail and when we got to chapel hill all of the nurses in picu had this… look. — this time i didnt call anyone because i was just so…  almost embarassed. the guilt of having gotten pregnant and then… this? i didnt really know how to cope with it all. Tyy was only in the hospital for 13 days this time. they did some surgery on his head, i think it was closing the bleed. this time there wasnt a bag of fluid at the side of the bed – there was a bag of blood. i just kept praying over him, and reading – if there is anything i can say about this incident as opposed to the first, is that God was with me. and i felt Him. i felt His Peace, and i KNEW that it was going to be ok. i think i was the only one though? heheh, none of the doctors really expected him to live, or at least be mentally competent.

When tyy was able to come home, life was SO busy! He had had a seizure originally on the way to the hospital due to the bleeding on his brain – which caused severe brain damage – if you didnt catch that from earlier- and was now on…. at least four different medications, plus his ’special’ formula. for the first six months, we were traveling back and forth to chapel hill several times a month for follow up appointments with the neurologist, neurosurgeon, orthopaedic, cardiologist, pulmonologist, and opthalmologist. not to mention the check ins that i was having to have with child protective services, and the two different developmental agencies we were following up with. whew. it was busy.

Waiting for answers, mother perseveres
The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Tyy Fritzky smiles, coos and wiggles like any other 8-month-old. The scar from where doctors slit open his head to drain blood has faded to pink. A batch of blond hair is growing around it. …Doctors tell his mother, Nichole Fritzky, that it’s too early to know whether Tyy’s injuries will affect his development. Most tests on children as young as Tyy are unreliable, said Desmond Runyan, professor and chairman of social medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill. But when he starts talking, therapists can give him an IQ test.

This is part of an article that was posted afterwards, no-one really expected tyy to do well, and that was even if he lived. which he did. i remember seeing the neurologist before she left unc to go work at some fancy hospital in chicago – i understand that she was a good doctor and all, she just didnt understand how he could be “OK.” ….she kept telling me “you need to get him into physical therapy!! when this brain damage(which by the way, was clearly visible on an MRI – just not in his developmental testings… then or ever.) begins to affect him, it’s gonna hit hard! – he’s not gonna be able to walk! he’s not gonna be able to talk! you NEED to get him into physical therapy!!” — i kept telling her that he was fine, and that he didnt need physical therapy and she was adamant that he was not going to be. i just nodded my head and silently disagreed. i didnt just completely ignore her though – but, what are you supposed to tell a physical therapist? can you help my son, he’s not having any problems now, but he will be? what do you “therapy”? haha, well, i had done that actually… and after a couple attempts at explaining what i meant, and successfully sounding stupid, i just decided that he was doing fine, and we would take further steps if he needed it. he hasnt.

Tyy’s eye on the other hand, was diagnosed at the time, as ‘blind’ ….or should i say that they quoted him to be blind in his left eye until he is able to better communicate what he IS able to see from that eye. *note his left eye has no red? what the red is, is light reflecting (called feedback) from your retina. which is said to be detached in his left eye. I am in complete agreement that we will determine his exact eye diagnoses…. after he is able to communicate it fully. however, last visit to the opthalmologist Tyy was able to answer all of the ‘how many fingers am i holding up’ questions… when his “good eye” was covered up, and even though there is somewhat of a difference in color of the red, he now has feedback in both eyes

so, lastly but not least – Tyy’s heart condition? we still have yearly check ups with his cardiologist, but tyy will not be needing another surgery— they thought he was going to need another one, in fact – we went to UNC in January of ‘07 because his doctor was going to put a stint in his aorta. — even though tyy had the original heart surgery, a seven day old infant’s heart is only so big to do so much. the doctor removed as much of the narrowing as was possible at the time, but it was always mentioned that if it did not grow with him as his body grew, another surgery could be, and probably would be needed. — however, the appointment was scheduled for a stint, but the doctor was able to take better pressure measurements in tyy’s heart from the catheter, they run a tool thing up an artery from his leg… Dr Frantz decided that he didnt need the stint after all and after the last appointment in January ‘08 Frantz said that he didnt think tyy would ever need another surgery with how well its growing.

i know that i titled this ‘tyy’s story’ and it seems kind of strange because so much through here, i mentioned myself, and what i was going through as well – but although it is tyy’s story, it is a HUGE story in my life too. i get pretty silly when i tell about all that has happened in tyy’s life, because it is really hard to keep my excitment in — it doesnt matter how many times i ever repeat all that God brought my son through, it never loses my amazement.