Rough start to the year for Baby Marno
There was the chance of Baby Marno heading home on 22 January.
After a positive end to 2018 following a successful cochlear implant operation, Baby Marno Greyvenstein has had a rough start to 2019, having being diagnosed with pneumonia.
Marno was born on 23 August 2016, and has spent just about as many days of his short life in a hospital bed as in the comfort of his home in Radiokop. He was born with a whole host of complications, including not having a corpus callosum, having severe micrognathia, plus a hole in the septum of his heart, as well as being unable to hear.
Since we last caught up with Baby Marno and the Greyvenstein family, Marno has come on in leaps and bounds, with his physiotherapy as well as speech therapy looking very positive. He has undergone a number of procedures in his short lifetime, of which three have been attempts at inserting a cochlear implant into his right ear, with the third being successful. The first two attempts were in February and April last year, with the final and successful attempt in June 2018. Prior to his third cochlear implant operation, Marno had been taken off his oxygen which was a huge step forward, as it finally meant he was strong enough to breathe on his own.
Read more:
https://roodepoortnorthsider.co.za/270117/baby-marno-the-15-year-old-gladiator-print-baby-marno-fighting-for-his-life-from-day-one-web/
Once Marno had recovered from his cochlear implant operation, the next step was for the implant to be switched on to see if it actually helped his hearing. It did indeed, and according to his dad Emile, signs have been positive. “He has been responding to noises now, and week-in and week-out he has speech therapy which has already started to help him.”
While 2018 might have been filled with necessary predicted procedures for Baby Marno, 2019 started off on a much rockier note when he was diagnosed with pneumonia and admitted to the paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) at Life Fourways Hospital on 14 January. His body has remained strong however, and fought off the pneumonia, which meant that at the time of writing Marno stood a chance of returning home on Tuesday, 22 January.
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