Dominic Wight is only five months old but he has lived through more medical issues than most adults will endure in a lifetime.
The Edmonton baby, born to Meagan and Jarrod Wight, smiles, coos and plays like any baby, however his body has battled one medical issue after the other in his short life.
Meagan, 32, went into early labour on Valentine’s Day.
On February 15, she delivered Dominic after an emergency C-section. He was born at 33 weeks.
“He came out and he was blue.”
Meagan, already a mother to three-year-old Zoë, initially didn’t realize her newborn son had medical issues. But when she found out, she said it felt like the air had been sucked out of the room.
“I didn’t know what to do,” she said.
Dominic was diagnosed with arteriovenous malformation (AVM) in his liver and his brain at two days old. The Toronto Brain Vascular Malformation Study Group at the University of Toronto describes AVM as a “tangle of abnormal and poorly formed blood vessels” that have a “higher rate of bleeding than normal vessels.”
Shortly after birth, the AVM in his right temporal lobe hemorrhaged and Dominic had a stroke, Meagan said, adding he was in palliative care for the first three days of his life.
“Our whole family was devastated. We didn’t know what to do,” she said.
“At this point, they actually told us things weren’t looking great for him and we should prepare for him to pass away.”
But the little baby fought and he survived the next few weeks in hospital, she said.
Then on March 9, Dominic underwent surgery on his liver; it was at this point that he caught a staph infection.
Meagan said the infection set Dominic back and he needed weeks of antibiotics to fight it off. But he continued to persevere, she said.
“I think he has a fighting spirit. He was named after my cousin, who unfortunately passed away, and my cousin had a fighting spirit.”
Dominic also has, what Meagan affectionately calls, “spots” that dot his entire body.
“They don’t know exactly what caused the spots. They turned out to just be benign birthmarks,” Meagan said, adding she takes Dominic to a dermatologist every month and he will likely be on medication for the next few years.
He was discharged from hospital on April 2, though Meagan said he will require more surgeries in the future.
Until then, the young family is enjoying the latest addition to the family.
Meagan admits she is unsure how Dominic will develop, saying she wants to give him as normal of a life as possible despite his medical conditions.
“There is a significant portion of his brain that is damaged. We’ve been told he might have cerebral palsy. He might be partially blind. There could be some learning deficits,” she said.
The mother of two has learned more about life through Dominic’s ups-and-downs.
“The human body is a mystery. We’ll never know what goes on inside, even with all the scans we have and all the tests that we can do.
“We can’t prepare for something that’s unknown,” Meagan said.
“The human body… is not going to give in and roll over as easy as one might expect.”
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