Victory Martial Arts - 2 weeks free!

October 7th, 2010

Master Riccardo at Victory Martial Arts is offering 2 free weeks of mma, kickboxing, grappling or kids martial arts classes for donations of $20 or more to non-Victory members!  Victory Martial Arts has several locations for your convenience.  Please have a printed copy of your donation receipt.

What happened to Makenzie

October 2nd, 2010

Makenzie was born February 7, 2010.  Her symptoms began the end of July 2010.  Her parents first realized something was wrong when she started sleeping 20 hours per day around her 6 month birthday.  Then it occurred to them, if there was something wrong, that her funny behavior where she throw out her arms and her eyes would bulge out of her head wasn't gas, maybe they were seizures.  The one instance her parents wished they wrong, they weren't.  

Makenzie was admitted to Loyola's Ronald McDonald Hospital on August 4 and didn't return home until August 16.  After ruling out Hydrocephalus, she was diagnosed with Neural Migration Disorder with Infantile Spasms.  In non-medical terms, this means that the cells in her brain did not migrate as they were supposed to during the first trimester of pregnancy.  As a result her brain did not develop as it needed to and is malformed.  She has the greatest deformation in the frontal and temporal lobes in her brain, which control emotional stability, personality, memory, language, judgment, impulse control, social behavior, movement, facial expression, spatial orientation, perception, attention - just to name a few. 

The Infantile Spasms are a particular type of seizure and are considered some of the most damaging.  In addition, she experiences subclinical seizures, which are occurring in her brain but have no external visible signs. 

There is also concern she might be cortically blind, meaning that her eyes work fine but the connection to her brain is damaged. So, it can't interpret what she sees.  For all intents and purposes, she'd be blind.  She will be having a diagnostic assessment in October 2010 which will hopefully give some insight.

The doctors repeatedly say there is no way to predict how this all will affect Makenzie except to say that minimally she will be developmentally delayed, and worst case, severely retarded......that only time will tell.

The doctors also say there is nothing to do about her mal-formed brain as it is structural damage and our science doesn't know how to fix that yet.  So, they are concentrating on trying to get rid of the seizures and providing her with therapy.  She has occupational, physical and developmental therapy each once a week.  She has speech therapy once a month until she gets a little older and then it will increase.  She had nutritional therapy once a month, and they'll know more about visual therapy after the diagnostic tests. 

Please help us help Makenzie.  Any questions, concerns or comments can be directed to jkreiman@hotmail.com.