United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

Its been a long time since I posted. Shame on me...

Many people here gave me hope and advice about my then 1 month old son who was experiencing a BPI.

Through an incredible amount of time, love and knowledge he is now 5 and doing amazing.

Without any Surgery he has recovered 95-98% of his movement in his right arm. Maybe he wasnt injured as bad as some others, maybe we where blessed with great help, maybe it was a miracle, perhaps all 3.

Regardless, He currently takes Karate (and is on his 3rd belt) and loves it. I cannot say enough about what a great sport it is. The Symmetry really seems to lend itself to help children affected by this injury. He also took Gymnastics from ages 2-4. If you have the opportunity and your Doctors and PTs agree I highly recommend these sports for the strength, conditioning and Symmetry they promote. They are as good or better then PTs (and we had some GREAT PTs).

Dr. Waters at Boston Childrens is a great guy and terrific doctor. Even without needing him to operate, the Calm Clear precise manner he talked us through my Sons injury truly made a scary situation better. I met him by sending him an email in tears. I knew no doctor would actually respond to some crazy distraught father blabbering about his sons arm "not working". He responded back in 30 minutes and 2 weeks later we had had our first appointment. Great guy.

My Son just completed his first season of Soccer (Scoring a goal in his last game) and has now moved on to and is extremely excited about Basketball.

Please keep the faith and the Hope. Some BPI injuries can be "overcome" without surgery. Enjoy your baby, work hard and get great support from the fine people here, your PT/OTs and your Doctors. It can and will get better.

For those of you who do have to face surgery, good luck and know we are all thinking about you and your children.

Baka

It is always fabulous to hear about a child who wasn't severely injured. Thank God that your birthing practitioner took a breath or a moment and decided not to make that pull on the head so traumatic. Your son was truly blessed.

There are some children who are mildly injured and do really well. There are some children who are severely injured who despite countless hours of love, attention, research, good doctors, extra-curricular activities and more, who continue to have repercussions from the injury. And there is a large amount of children who fall in the middle.

We all do the best we can.