It's just hard to imagine that you have a four year old that's jumping ramps with his bike.
You know, he's riding a scooter, trying to do tricks, and then all of a sudden
you're dealt with this.
A couple of weeks ago we noticed Connor started having some shaking in his left arm.
I told him every time he had the tremor please come to me, you know, and one day,
it was a Sunday, he came to me eight different times.
You're having one, buddy? You're having one?
Come here. Put your head.
Don't drool on me. Don't drool on me.
Count it. Here, take your helmet off real quick.
Here.
Are you okay? Ready to count?
How many eyes do I have? How many eyes do I have?
Zero. Zero?
Count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, count with me,
8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, you're all right, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, what's up?
Finished? Twenty two.
How many? Twenty two.
And you didn't even slobber. Twenty two, all done?
I was told that Connor has a mass on his brain or in his head.
You can't even imagine that something like that would happen to you or anyone that
you know and your life is just suddenly different. Today is Wednesday.
We'll be taking him into Johns Hopkins Children Center on Monday morning to,
you know, to get the tumor removed.
As approach Monday for Connor surgery, the fear is coming back, you know,
the emotions are, you know, getting scared a little bit.
Even though I know the best is the best working on him, I'm getting scared.
I love you. You be brave, okay?
They're gonna put you to sleep.
When you wake up, daddy will be here, okay? Hear me?
You want that arm fixed, right?
I love you. I love you.
I love you, too. What we're hoping is that, long run,
that we'll be able to remove this tumor completely, that this will be a cure for him.
We also wanna know what type of tumor this is.
You want me to count? Huh?
1, 2, 3, it's almost finished. Huh?
Is it gonna stop? Huh?
Done. All done. All right.
All right, they're getting ready. You ready, buddy?
Yeah. Look at that smile.
He's ready.
The key thing here is the tumor's closeness to what's called the motor
strip, so we have to use some technology where we're gonna place electrodes on the
brain and those will help us in determining where that key area is.
We have the brain surface exposed. We see where the tumor is.
We have to find out where are that motor cortex is.
Will you please let the family knows that he is doing okay.
The biggest thing at risk for him today is losing power in that other side of his body.
Okay, we're all done. All right. Okay.
What's our news? So, everything went well, okay.
Everything went great, all right. The first thing was it was very obvious
initially where the tumor was, okay. The thing that was a little bit
unexpected was how close it was to the motor strip.
From the surface all the way down, deep down inside, to us it's about four
centimeters, which about three inches. That's not a cancerous malignant lesion
by any stretch of imagination, okay. So that to us is a big relief, all right,
so we're not talking about a tumor that's gonna aggressively go back.
Best place in the country. Yeah, world.
In the world, I'm sorry. I don't mean to minimize.
They fixed our baby. They did, that's right.
That's right, that's right. We're relieved.
Will you touch my hand with your hand? It's Friday and things are going great.
We have our son back five days later from brain surgery.
You know, the laughing, the smiling, you know, which makes mom and dad happy as can be.
What did the doctor undo for you? He made your arm stop shaking by doing what?
Taking ball out of my head. Taking a ball out of your head, right,
and it worked. It worked.
Based on the MRI results that tumor is gone and seeing that he's regaining
strength here at a rapid pace I think he's looking at a good recovery here.
Kick my hand. No, ow. He's gonna need to work with physical
therapy to regain the full strength on that side which I expect he will.
Another miracle is just watching him go from not being able to move anything on
Monday, and then, you know, Tuesday a little bit, Wednesday a little bit more,
Thursday a little bit more, and now we walked all the way down the hall.
In the time frame of just a few weeks ago until now it's just like, wow, all this
has happened in a short period of time and these results are great, they're awesome.
Connor is doing great. It's been a little over three months,
pushing four months now since surgery.
The sure sign of -- that the tumor wasn't removed would be how we started
this process when he had seizures. So far he hasn't had any and trust me,
as a parent, we watched.
He's still working on his fine motor skills on his left hand and a little bit
in his leg, but you know, as a dad, I couldn't be happier.
It's good day today. You ready? I don't know that you can even fully thank
the doctor who did that for your child, like, there's no way to really express the
gratitude that is necessary.