Stephen Hills
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My sons, Stephen and Brandon Hills, fraternal twins were born on November 20, 1996, healthy and on time. They had few serious health problems until January 1999, when Stephen became ill and starting having severe bruising. We took him several times to the doctor and finally, at the end of January, he was diagnosed with Leukemia (ALL). A week into his chemotherapy, he woke up with croup and began having problems breathing. That day was a rough day, and he ended up in intensive care, but he made it through without being intubated. The next day though, we were informed that he had to go into surgery for a mediport placement. He went into surgery the next morning. Thirty minutes later, the doctor came out to talk to us, and he told us that when they were intubating him, they discovered some serious redness and swelling. They were afraid that if they took out the intubation tube that his throat would totally swell up. The decision was made to put Stephen into a medicated coma and keep the tube in until the swelling went down. Two week passed, and finally, the swelling had gone down enough to try to extubate him. Unfortunately, it was unsuccessful. They tried again two weeks later, and that one was unsuccessful also. They did a laryngoscopy and decided that he had vocal cord paralysis. That week, they decided to put a trach in. He was then able to be woken up from his medicated coma, unfortunately having to go through severe withdrawal symptoms, which for two weeks they told me that they though he had brain damage) but he was able to get out of intensive care and onto the oncology floor. (We also found out around this time that they had gotten his leukemia into remission.) Because of his long stay in intensive care in a coma, he had to rebuild his muscle strength. He had to learn to pick up his head, roll over, crawl and finally walk. It took months and he is really just now getting complete control back. He had to have a g-tube placed because he was severely aspirating his liquids and some foods. Finally in the middle of April, we were able to go home. From April 1999 until January 2000, we were told that he had vocal cord paralysis, but this month, January, we went to see a specialist at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, and he found that he did not have vocal cord paralysis, but that he had subglottic stenosis. Since he is still on maintenance chemotherapy, the specialist is going to talk to the oncologists and myself about the safety of performing reconstructive surgery on his throat. He also has reflux that has to be under total control before the surgery because it can cause further damage and cause the scar tissue to return. He has been put on Propulsid and Zantac and will be reevaluated next month. Otherwise Stephen is doing great and is finally growing his hair back now that he is on just chemotherapy pills. He has a good chance, about a 60-70% chance of never getting his leukemia back and his specialist is very confident that the surgery will be a success.
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Stephen (left) and twin brother Brandon
