Help my daughter continue to go to appointments.
Hello, my name is Marisa Gaspar, I am 32 years old, I live in Montalvo, in the municipality of Constância, in the district of Santarém, and I am a nursing home assistant at the Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Constância. Six years ago, I became the mother of a girl named Beatriz. The entire pregnancy was going well until, at 36 weeks + 6 days, on August 11, 2018, I woke up with contractions and had to go to the obstetrics emergency room at the Abrantes Hospital, where I was promptly assisted and monitored. I underwent several necessary tests, such as a CTG, the so-called "digital examination", and I was kept under observation all day, until the doctor came to see me after lunch and decided to perform an emergency cesarean section because the contractions continued to increase and the dilation also increased. It had to be a cesarean section because Beatriz was in a sitting position and because she was born before the end of her term. At 8:29 pm on August 11, 2018, Beatriz was born, weighing 2.075 kg and measuring 43.5 cm. She was apparently born healthy and in good health. But unfortunately, the nightmare came later, when they tested her ears and her right ear never passed the tests, her platelets were much lower than normal, as soon as they took her blood for analysis, the blood would clot right away... something was wrong, during those 5 days that Beatriz was in the incubator, yes because as she was born prematurely and had a little ecterism she had to go to the incubator, blood was taken for analysis and she did several tests and exams to find out what she had, and at that time the Abrantes hospital was in contact with the Estefânia Hospital to try to find out what Beatriz had. On the 5th day of her life, Beatriz was transferred to the Dona Estefânia Hospital in Lisbon, where she was admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit, where several tests and analyses were performed. Beatriz was born with Congenital Cytomegalovirus (a virus from the herpes family), which I caught at the end of my pregnancy without knowing how, because I had always been careful and never had any symptoms. And this virus caused her several after-effects, the worst and irreversible after-effect that she had was profound deafness in her right ear. She took antivirals to combat the virus and other medication for her liver and spleen. She spent some time in the incubator, then she was transferred to the Infectious Diseases Unit at the Dona Estefânia Hospital. In total, Beatriz was hospitalized for a month. As soon as we arrived, they told me not to breastfeed her because they had to test my milk, and then came more terrible news: my milk also had the virus, I had to express the milk and throw it away because I couldn't give it to her because of the virus. During that month, Beatriz continued to take her medication and even came home with the same medication that we had to pick up at the pharmacy at the Estefânia Hospital. She took this medication for 6 months and thank God it helped a lot because her viral load reduced a lot and the virus no longer caused any after-effects. After a month we came home, but every month, sometimes more than once a month, we had to go to several appointments where she continues to be monitored today. After so much research and meeting with doctors and doing tests and studies on this virus, Beatriz's blood to screen for other viruses and diseases, they decided to operate on Beatriz to place a cochlear implant in her right ear. So on October 22, 2020, Beatriz underwent surgery to place the cochlear implant. At first, Beatriz could only hear sounds like whistles, but 4 years went by, with many appointments and programming of the speech processor, because every year and more than once we continue to go to appointments where she is monitored and also has to program the processor, that is, she undergoes tests (with louder, softer, higher pitched, lower pitched sounds...). Beatriz has been improving her speech and balance a lot, in everything. She has adapted well to the speech processor, it makes a difference to her when she doesn't have it on, because she always wears it throughout the day, only taking it off to sleep, take a shower, go to the beach, go to the pool, go to physical education classes... so that it doesn't get wet or break. She continues to be monitored in multidisciplinary appointments at the Estefânia Hospital.
