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you leave so I can visit your site. Thanks.

This page is for my son,Gabriel who died from medulloblastoma.
At five and a half months, Gabriel was diagnosed with
this type of brain tumor, which is malignant. He had
symptoms but we did not realize them at first. We never
expected a brain tumor! Who would ever think that a little
baby would have such a horrible disease?

Gabriel was born with no complications except for the fact
that I had to have a c-section. He never cried (almost never),
he was always happy and content with whatever he was doing.
He did like to fight his sleep....Well when he was 4 1/2 months
old his eyes started moving down. What I mean is you could
see a lot of the whites in the tops of his eyes. When he would
look at something he would have to hold his head backwards
to look at it. Well I asked everyone was his eyes going to go
back to normal and they always said yes. So there was no
cause for alarm. Then his soft spot started bulging which
we did not see until after we went to the doctor. We took him
to the doctor because he started vomiting. When we got him
to the doctor they measured his head circumference. It was
too large for his age and had grown too much from the last
time we took him to the doctor. So the doctor made him an
appointment to have a brain ultrasound. We had that done
and before we got home, the hospital had called us to come
back to the hospital and pick up the ultrasounds and go to a
neurosurgeon. We went to the neurosugeon and he scheduled
a MRI for that same day. He had that done and finally we
went home.

This is Gabriel after his first surgery.

Then that same night after we put him to bed, he just kept
whimpering so we decided to take him to the emergency
room. We called the neurosurgeon on-call and he told us
just to go ahead and bring him in. When we got there they
did their examining and then the doctor came and got us and
took us to a little room and had us sit down. He told us about
the different reasons a baby would have fluid on the brain,
then he said that our son had the type that was obstructed
(meaning something was blocking the fluid from leaving his
head). He then told us our son had a huge brain tumor and
that he had to preform surgery that night to relieve some of
the pressure or Gabriel would not make it through the
weekend. We agreed to the surgery and they took our son to OR.

We really felt numb and like we would never see our baby
again. Well, he came out of surgery fine and they scheduled a
brain tumor resection for three days later. He went to that
surgery and we were scared because this surgery was much
more dangerous. He came out of that surgery fine too. He was
in that hospital for two weeks and then he got to come home
on Thanksgiving Day. It was wonderful to have him home
again.

This is Gabriel at his only Christmas.

The weekend after Thanksgiving he went to a new hospital
were he underwent another brain tumor resection. Also he had
eight more surgeries involving his head and two surgeries for
lines for chemotherapy. The first line(which was an infusaport,
a line that hangs out of your chest) he had put in got infected
and they had to take him to surgery and remove it and then
they put in a Broviac (which is under the skin instead of
hanging out of the skin). The Broviac was like a little button
under his skin. I hated all the things he went through. He got
stuck all the time, he had lots of CT scans and MRIs. He
always had an IV in it seemed like. He ended up getting sick
from the things going around in the hospital. He had to have
a spinal tap and a bone marrow and he had to have a bone
scan.

Finally he started his chemotherapy. It made him very sick
and made his hair fall out. Even though he didn't have much
anyway because of the surgeries. He had to go once a week
for chemotherapy and by the time he started on the chemo
the cancer had already spread down his spine. Which this
meant that it would be harder to kill the cancer. Well a
month after he started chemo the cancer took over and it
ended up wrapping around his brain stem and crushing it.
The cancer spread really fast. So he did not suffer too long
after the cancer spread around the brain stem. It took it a
total of two days to do that, before it ended up taking his life.

The hardest thing we ever had to do was watch our son take
his last breath. It broke our hearts. We will always have a
special place in our hearts for him. Even though our son went
through all this he brought a lot of happiness into our lives.
He went through more than I think any of us could have
handled ourselves. He was a brave little boy and he was
amazing. He always seemed to be happy even after he would
come out of his surgeries. He brought a lot of joy into our
families lives and we really miss him.

The left picture is of Gabriel 22 days before he left us.
The right picture of Gabriel with his Pooh hat on.

Gabriel was special. Gabriel was like an angel. I guess that is
why he left us so early in life. Gabriel taught us a lot of things
even though he was only here a short time.

MRI Photos

Notes doctors made about tests

More Pictures


Meet more special angels in Heaven

We now have a have two daughters
they are 5 & 6 years old. Stop by their site.

Here is a link to Leah's page.
Just click on her picture.

Leah

Awards given to Gabriel's Memorial Site
Awards page 1 Awards page 2
Awards page 3 Awards page 4
Awards page 5 Awards page 6


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LINKS

Here are some links on medulloblastoma and
also some brain tumor associations.

Medulloblastoma and its symptoms

American Brain Tumor Association

National Childhood Cancer Foundation

Childhood Cancer


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