Sonja B Green Home

Today started out a wee bit chaotic....The first day of care giver school was scheduled at Sonja B. Green home for moms/ dads with Hydrocephalic babies. The team was told to expect 6-10 moms and babies in the class.

As we were preparing to leave, we were told some of the moms, babies were at the clinic to ride with us.

I will back up just a little bit with some history. The Sonja B Green Hydrocephalis program is a joint project with Medishare in Miami- HHH finds the potential patients , provides care giver training classes over a 4 day period. The Medishare neuro surgeons come down and pre screen, test and then provide surgery for the kids that can benefit- not all will fit criteria. I was told that prior to the care giver training, there was approx. 50% rate of death following surg. Since then over the past 3 years, only 1 or 2 have died...

The moms and babies come from all over the provinces and stay for the 4 days of 'school' at the Sonja B green home. Ok so we go to the clinic to pick up the moms- There were 22 with babies, and their personal belongings and a couple extra people. Plus 5 team members,

1 translator, 1 coordinator, and 1 driver and 1 van....We weren't all going to fit so we got a tap tap off the street. Half in the van and the rest of us in the tap tap. and off we went -

Arriving about 45 min. later.

The kids range in age of infant to 10 yr today and in the end the group was 25 including about 4 dads. Its an intensive class for those parents- but maybe an incredible support group for them to know they aren't alone with the very sad realization of the future of some of these kiddos. This is the first time that I've had any part of this program- my part today was just to hold any baby that was fussing so mom could focus on the class. All I can say is life is very unfair sometimes.