Posted on 12/19/2009 6:03:24 AM PST by NYer
Pueblo, Colorado - Nicholas Coke, a baby boy from Pueblo is a living miracle. He was born with no brain. He can’t see, hear, crawl or suck, but still managed to make a history. This week he has completed his one year’s tough fight for survival.
The disease Nicholas was born with is called Anencephaly. It’s a genetic disorder in which a person has no brain, just a brain stem. Anencephaly is a defect in the closure of the neural tube during development in the womb. The neural tube is a narrow channel that folds and closes between the third and fourth weeks of pregnancy, forming the brain and the spinal cord. In rare cases, one end of the neural tube does not close. This results in the absence of a major part of the brain, skull, and scalp.
Anencephaly occurs in about 1 out of 10,000 births, although the exact number is not known because many of these pregnancies result in a miscarriage, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
The cause of anencephaly is unknown, although the mother’s diet, including an insufficient intake of folic acid, may play a role. Most scientists, however, believe many other factors are also involved.
Nicholas, the miracle child has survived without doctors, or tubes. Her mother Sheena told that he even showed sign of emotion. It was his first smile that brings solace to her poor mother.
They are celebrating every moment as they didn’t know when that fateful moment would come and they had to witness their child breathing his last breath.
We wish Nicholas a Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas. May God bless him.
Brain is the computer...It is hardware.
Soul doesn’t reside in the brain, it is merely the means of expression.
This child is very precious to God, if not to humans.
This child allows others to act out compassion, nurturing and love.
What ever you do the the least of these, you do to me.
This little blind, deaf baby is Christ.
This child is the “least of them” that Jesus spoke of.
What ever you do to them, you do to me.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
This child would not have survived if his mother didn’t intensely love him.
He requires intense attention without the rewards back to a parent of the coo’s, the grins , the laughter , the milestones that most parents mark.
He is a great gift to his mother. Yes, he will no doubt break her heart but everyone you love will break it at some point.
Are you supposed to love less because you will be hurt at some point. ?
I think God very much knew what he was doing in selecting this Mother for this child.
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Good question. I was wondering the same thing. If some compensation might be occurring.
An example in my own family. My grandmother was paralyzed on one side from a stroke. About 8 years later, she started to be able to move her toes on that side, and then her foot and leg. Her fingers also. She regained some feeling on the paralyzed side.
Given enough time, her body compensated and made new connections.
I’m glad you got ‘er figured out.
Doesn’t matter how, it just matters that he has survived for this long, and he’s able to be loved, unconditionally, by his parents. They’ll be sad when he dies, but they’ll know that they did everything they possibly could for him. And who knows, maybe he DOES know what they’re doing, but just doesn’t have the ability to express that.
In rare cases that can be misdiagnosed as well.
I read of an account where a baby was diagnosed with this condition and it turned out to be the force of the fluid on the brain that flattened the brain enough to make it not detectable in an x-ray.
Since the baby had some function, a shunt was installed and the parents had to make sure that the fluid was draining almost continually, with only the hope of saving his life, but not of much more. As the pressure was relieved, the baby improved dramatically and started showing signs of normal development.
When the mother went back to see one of the doctors who had not followed the case after the birth, about a year later, the baby was in his stroller, popped his bottle out of his mouth and said a cheery *Hi!* to the doctor. They about had to pick him up off the floor.
In this case, I can’t help but wonder how the child survived. If the baby didn’t even have a sucking reflex, how did the baby manage to eat?
Personality and soul are different things as far as I can tell.
There’s no way that we’re ever going to be in the position of determining that so it’s better to err on the side of caution and presume that there is.
Let God determine the rest.
True.
This confuses me. Your heart goes out to this child, so it should be killed?
If this were my child, I'd care for it as long as it would live. No killing kids in my world, regardless their born condition.
The soul is created directly by God and is united with the body at conception. Among other things, one can consider the soul to be the “life force” that makes us live - from that very first moment of our existence in our mother’s womb until it is separated from the body at our physical death. In any case, it is given to us at our conception, when none of us had a brain of any type at all. Therefore, questions regarding lack of a functioning brain are irrelevant. The child, however incapacitated mentally, is still a human being, endowed by God with an immortal soul.
This is not rare, this is the only one I have read of that survived even a couple of hours with this defect..Its one of a kind...God Bless him.....rare means it only happens rarely, this never happen before...
Good, logical response. Thanks.
It is possible that it is the babies soul that at times comes through.
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