Hunter was born in June of 2009 in Wichita Falls, Texas. At birth, he weighed seven pounds, five ounces and was 20 3/4 inches long. He had fluid on his lungs and a pronounced heart murmur. As a result, he was transferred to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for two days. We had a 3 day stay in the hospital before coming home.

At four months, Hunter’s Dad and I noticed that Hunter would shake abnormally when waking. His development appeared to be slow. After a few months, we were enrolled in the ECI program through North Texas Rehabilitation Center. The therapists recommended that we see a neurologist. Before the neurology appt, his pediatrician ordered an MRI . It was evaluated by Cook’s neurology and revealed an increased signal in the posterior white matter of Hunter’s brain. Further tests concluded that there was not any disease to the white matter. However, an abnormal chromosome level was detected.

We were referred to a geneticist at Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas for further testing. A microarray analysis test confirmed the anomaly. He has a duplication and a deletion on the long arm of Chromosome 10.

We have been blessed to celebrate 2 birthdays with our sweet boy. And we are looking forward to the third. Hunter is happy. He’s learning to speak. He walked a little before his 2nd birthday. He is involved in all therapies and is progressing rather remarkably.

As far as testing, his heart has passed inspections! He still has the murmur but it is not of concern to the doctors. He does have enlarged kidneys but all testing points to no blockage or reflux so the doctor feels it will correct itself as he gets older. We will check this annually. We have traveled across the states to see a neuro-geneticist but without any luck of gaining any more answers. They did confirm one of the genes missing from Hunter’s deletion is a tumor suppressor gene which means he is at a greater risk of not being able to fight off a tumor, should one present itself.

We are learning to be grateful every day and not take a day for granted.