My 10 year old daughter, who also has Down Syndrome, was diagnosed on July 25th and first surgery is scheduled for September 14th.  She will be having it done at Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock. School starts back tomorrow and I want to keep her home. She is doing fine but I'm scared of the what ifs. Any suggestions? Will I get worse after surgery?

ds-mm,
I know how scary this can be. My son Tyler had a stroke on Christmas break when he was 11-years-old. It took the doctors a few months to diagnose what caused his stroke. Once he was daignosed it became scarier because of the risk of another stroke without the surgery. However, I just let the teachers know what was going on and kept in close contact with them. Heck, I got my first cell phone to keep in contac,t with the school. I didn't want Tyler to feel more stress by sitting at home thinking of what might happen, when he could be at school learning and playing with his friends. As a parent I know it is much harder on us than our children. They seem to be able to just keep going and not think about it near as much as we do.

I know many people have migrains with MM, but Tyler had his migrains mainly after his stroke and before his surgery. The teachers would let him sleep at school if the migrain hit him before lunch. Tyler bounces back from a migrain like no one else I have talked to, so this helped him to atleast get a half day in at school if he did have a migrain.

As everyone on here will tell you, every case is different. So, you just need to know how your daughter and her school feels about her being in school during this time.

As far as after surgery, once again every case is different. Tyler had his surgery in June on summer break. He had his in CA and two weeks after the second surgery he was playing in the sprinkler, swimming, and jumping on a trampoline with his cousins of the same age as he was. You can go back through the archives and see how stressed I was, but Tyler just seemed to take it all in stride.

Good Luck my prayers are with you.  [smiley=hug.gif]

Rena

Hello,and welcome.Our daughters are the same age.My daughter was diagnosed 5 yrs ago and had surgery at Boston with Dr. Scott.She was 5 yrs old at the time.She also was born with Down Syndrome.She had several strokes one very severe .But she has not had any strokes since her surgeries.She's doing amazingly well,and recovering from the strokes.She's mainstreamed and going into 4th grade in Sept.If I can help you with any specific qoestions jsut let me know.You can also e-mail privatly if you like.Many prayers for your family.
Mary Grace
mgrace5@nycap.rr.com