Hello Everyone! I know that so many people do not really know what is going on in Kaydence's life and about her medical conditions and such.  So, I am taking the opportunity and using the website that Tom created for her before she was born, to be able to keep everyone who is interested, better informed on Kaydence's life and health.

1.  Kaydence has a seizure disorder.  She has myoclonic seizures (full body twitches) and head drops (she loses control of her head and it drops down uncontrollably).  Right now these are being succesfully treated with medicine, she has not had any seizures in about 2 months!  However, when she grows more she will probably have to get it readjusted.

2.  Kaydence has visual impairment.  They believe that it is Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI), however, the doctors will not come out and diagnose her with this.  And it means that nothing is physically wrong with her eyes, but signals get crossed between what the eyes see, and what the brain interprets.  However, her vision is doing a lot better all considering.

3.  Kaydence has hearing loss.  She has moderate to severe hearing loss, and she has recently started wearing hearing aides (they are purple!).  So she is still trying to get used to those.  The doctors believe that her hearing loss is due to the hypoxia (lack of oxygen) she experienced at birth when the cord was wrapped around her neck.

4.  Kaydence has developmental delays.  She still can not crawl (she just scoots), she can not walk, she does not talk (but still makes a lot of noise), and is still not the most stable to sit up on her own.  She also will not eat anything but baby food, anything thicker and she gags and chokes.  She also can not feed herself, or hold her own bottle.

5.  Kaydence has been to the geneticist, who feels as though she does have a genetic disorder, it is just unknown to him as to which one she may have.  We will be doing some testing in May to try to determine something, however only 3-5% of people/children who undergo these tests ever have anything come of it.  He told us that we have to be aware that we may never find out exactly what is wrong with her.

6.  Kaydence has 3 sessions of therapy every week.  This is done through ECI (Early Childhood Intervention) who come to the house for the therapy.  On Mondays, it is deaf education, who is teaching her to learn to hear with her hearing aides, and eventually talk and do signs (hopefully).  On Wednesdays she has physical/developmental therapy, to strengthen her muscles and teach her to crawl and walk and such.  On Thursdays she has vision therapy, which is to help strengthen her eyesight (because the way she is impaired can not be correcte with glasses).

So we are constantly busy with therapies and doctor appointments and all that fun stuff.  But she is such a blessing to have, and worth every bit of it.  She goes through so much, yet, is the most happiest baby.  Her smile brightens our day, and her laughter is infectious.  She is and will always be our angel.  We will post updates when new information arises, thank you for reading about our beautiful little girl, and prayers are always appreciated.

Bridgett Hoover