Featured cherub of the week is Samuel Ashby. Sam is the son of Kim and Bruce Ashby. Kim Ashby is CDH International’s Virginia Ambassador. Kim had this to share about Samuel.
“Sam was born July 25, 1997 with undiagnosed left side CDH. Fortunately, he was delivered via c-section and the neonatologist was in the operating room. The doctor knew right away he was struggling to breath and intubated Sam within minutes. Sam was stabilized over the next few days then underwent surgery on day three. Surgery was a success and Sam breezed through the NICU stay and was released on August 7th. He was able to come home without oxygen or any other medical interventions.
We thought we had CDH behind us until Sam was 8 months old when he re-herniated. He went though another successful surgery and PICU stay. A year later he was hospitalized again for bowel obstruction. The obstruction was resolved with just an NG tube placement and did not require surgery.
CDH has not slowed him down. Sam excelled in school, graduating high school with a 4.0 GPA. Sam was able to play sports, baseball being his favorite. He joined Boy Scouts and earned the rank of Eagle Scout. Sam is currently working on a Material Science Engineering degree at Virginia Tech.
Sam’s residual CDH problems are stomach pain/tightness when laying on his stomach and frequent hiccups. Not bad given the doctors gave him a 30% change of survival at birth.”
