The Cairney Family: A Brief History

Zechariah Jason Cairney was born on April 4th, 2012 at 9:22 PM at Glencoe Regional Health Services.

4/5/2012

Zeke was 100% healthy with no concerns at all except for a congenital nevus (first described to us as a giant hairy nevus) on the right side of his scalp.

4/10/2012

We had no idea what this growth was or what it meant for Zeke short or long term. A short Google search (which we were told not to do) showed quite a few alarming websites - problems ranging from social scarring to chronic health problems. We should have listened. As we would find out later, each situation is very unique and there are often a lot of things that contribute to all of those other problems, not necessarily just the nevus.

Our first specialist stop was to a pediatric dermatologist on 4/17/2012. We learned quite a bit during our first visit. The main thing we learned is that we should know fairly quickly how serious Zeke's future health could be as a result of the tissue that grew the nevus.

There were two main things that tissue tests and an MRI would tell us over the next few weeks. First, is the nevus itself cancerous tissue or not? Second, was there any internal growth accompanying the external nevus? The chances of either of these items being an issue were pretty low. From how our conversation went, it sounded like nevi are usually nothing more than areas of skin that look different than others. For example, left untreated, Zeke's nevus would always have a different color, the hair would always be different than the rest of his scalp (texture/length/color), the skin would be more susceptible to ripping or tearing, and it would also be at a higher risk for skin cancer. The tissue did not have any coloration that immediately concerned the dermatologist and we left more informed and knowing we would be back soon to discuss further steps.

We next met with our plastic surgeon for the first time on 4/30/2012. Assuming all tests came back negative, our next course of action would be to start removing the nevus. After examining the positioning and area of his nevus, she determined that the best way to remove it would be by one or a combination of two different procedures.

First, is a staged excision. Through this process, the nevus would be removed in stages, cutting from the middle and pulling together the remaining skin to let heal. Doing this would allow for a hopefully large removal each time, depending on the amount and elasticity of his remaining skin. Second, is tissue expansion. This would be done by inserting a "balloon" under good skin on Zeke's scalp and inflating the "balloon" over a 3-6 month period. Once this was complete, part of the nevus could be removed and the extra good skin could then be folded over the area just removed. This would be more uncomfortable over a longer period of time and carried other risks such as popping and infection (although both also very low risks). Both these options would let Zeke's hairline stay pretty much intact and leave him with just a single straight-line scar that would likely be hidden once hair grew around it.

We felt very comforted to be in such great hands. If needed, we would not want to actually have a surgery until Zeke was 6 months old in order to let him be old enough for everything that would go into the procedure and also to let his skin be grown a little more to handle a surgery. We tentatively scheduled the surgery for election day, 11/6/2012.

With the MRI coming up and the rest of Zeke's health somewhat up in the air, Zeke was baptized in a private ceremony on 5/1/2012, followed by an affirmation in front of friends and family on 5/27/2012. It was a great load off our shoulders to remind us that the LORD was looking over our one-month old son and that now through baptism he had been reborn as a child of God.

5/27/2012

Then on May 16, 2012, Zeke all of 6 weeks old, we went to Children's Hospital in Minneapolis for an MRI of Zeke's brain and spinal cord to make sure there was no abnormal growth underneath the skin. The MRI was actually no big deal, but Zeke had to be put under with general anesthesia, which at his age way pretty scary. Fortunately, everything went very well and he had no problems being put under. It was pretty nerve wracking for Mom and Dad, but Zeke was super. Mom stayed overnight with him for observation just to make sure everything went okay. We weren't expecting any results for about a week or so, but we did hear some initial reports that everything seemed normal, but that they wanted to do an ultrasound on his kidney area for something they picked up on the MRI that was likely unrelated to everything else. After the ultrasound, they believed they found a slight abnormality with his kidney, but after seeing a urologist a few weeks later, he didn't know what they were looking at - everything was fine. A confirmation came later that everything with the MRI did in fact look normal - no abnormal internal growth.

5/21/2012

5/23/2012

On 5/25/2012, once we had the MRI results, our dermatologist took some samples of the nevus tissue to determine if it was benign or not. Those results also came in fairly quickly, again everything looking very good - no cancerous tissue.

This gave us the few next months off to not worry too much about Zeke's health and focus on a growing little boy. Any fears we internally still had about him to suddenly get sick or to be in pain from the nevus quickly went away as we had a perfect baby acting just the same as his brother and sister did before him.

Finally, on 9/24/2012 we met with our plastic surgeon again to finalize the plan and date for surgery. She determined that for this first go-round we would be able to an excision. He had plenty of give in his baby skin that she felt very confident that she would be able to cut out a large section. We also moved the surgery date up to 10/23/2012.

This picture really shows how different the hair is.

More below, but here are lots of pictures from 10/22/2012:

Grandma Nelsen came up to watch Isabella and take Elisha to school on the day of surgery. We went to Children's in Minneapolis again, bright and early for the surgery.

The results were much more than our plastic surgeon had expected. She was able to cut out about 35-40% of the total growth. We weren't able to see the results for about a day or so as we tried to keep everything covered for the first little bit. But we couldn't believe our eyes once we saw how great it looked. He was a bit groggy from the anesthesia, but once he woke all the way up, he was pretty much back to normal. The incision healed perfectly and the scar held up amazingly over the next several months.

That completes the first six (basically seven) months in Zeke's history. More to come with subsequent posts.