It started when Gabe accidentally left the basement door open and Coop tried to crawl down the stairs. It didn't work out so well for him. You'll be happy to know that we installed a pneumatic door closer thingy that evening, so this won't happen again. Anyway, on with the story. By the time my grandma got here to watch Gabe while I took Cooper to the ER, all 3 of us were crying. Craig met us there and Cooper had an X-ray and a CT scan of his head. Nothing was broken (yay!) but they did find a cyst in a part of his brain. The ER doctor said it wasn't anything acute, but should probably be followed up on yearly. We asked our pediatrician to review the reports and scan, and she did. She also referred us to a neurosurgeon in Columbus.
We saw him today. He said everything is ok. Apparently people can be born with these types of cysts (3-4% of the world's population), and Cooper is one of them. His health or development isn't being affected in any way right now. But, in a year, just to make sure, we're going to do an MRI to check on it again. The only issue that we may have is that the cyst is against an area of the brain that controls memory. The dr said that he may have some subtle memory issues, but he doesn't expect that he will. Fortunately, for babies the "hardwire" in your brain isn't set in stone yet. So, if the right side of his brain has a cyst, the left side will almost always rewire to make up for it. He is going to do some neuropsych testing (memory, and vocabulary type stuff) when he's around 3 years old, again just to make sure.
So, we all breathed a BIG sigh of relief, and got back to living life. Felt like we were on pause for awhile. :o) Well, not Cooper. He never stops moving or eating, lol, that's probably why he's such a good sleeper at night.
I work with a man who has the same type if cyst in his brain. He's just fine!!
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