Nicole Vasquez
From Holoprosencephaly
Nicole is now 17 years old. She's in 10th grade at a regular high school and doing well. She had botox and phenol injections in her legs to relax her muscles in Jan and that has helped a lot. The dr. wanted to do surgery and I said, let's go the conservative route since I didn't want to deal with her being in a body cast for 3-4 weeks. Not fun!!
Nicole reads at about a 5th grade level, still struggles with math and takes most of her tests on a computer since she still has trouble writing. She can write her first name pretty legibly, but her other writing is difficult to read. She tries hard though and enjoys the computer. She loves music and movies, surfing the net for music and movies too.
There seems to be so much more information out there now vs. when Nicole was born. There are a lot more resources, etc. I think that is awesome especially someone is facing some difficult times with not knowing what the future holds. The key for me and what I tell others is to always have hope, pray, and God will give you strength. Don't buy into what the dr's say as they aren't always the experts, and they don't have to live in our shoes day in and day out. It's easy for them to say what your child won't be able to do, but they don't realize what it is like to hear that. So, don't buy everything they say. Nicole is truly a miracle - she talks pretty well (slurs her words sometimes and has trouble projecting her voice), but we're working with her on this. She's doing some on the job training through her high school so she's learning that in the workplace you have to initiate conversation, project your voice and pronounce your words so others can understand you. She'll be practicing that a lot as right now she's a greeter at Walmart. She's always happy. She's always been able to eat normally and has never had a G-tube or anything. She doesn't take any medication either and never has. She got her braces off her teeth in November so her smile is even more beautiful. She walks about 500 ft at a stretch with a walker, but gets tired easily.
She just got finished playing basketball on her high school special olympics team. Here's the link to the local news station that did a feature story on them. She's the only one in a wheel chair, but they had a great time. If you click on the video camera under the team picture (once you launch the link), you can watch the video that aired on T.V. - it was very heart warming!
http://www.9news.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=65358
We've always treated Nicole like a normal kid - it helped also having another child (we have a son, Nick, who is 14 and in 8th grade). He's helped to push her a little and he's great with her. He's now kind of like an older brother even though he's 2 1/2 years younger than Nicole.
Here's a picture of us in July in Mexico - we had a great time! Nicole loves to swim too. We put her in an water ring and she swims pretty independent from there. Her tone kicks in when she tries to move her legs. We have never put her in swimming lessons either - mainly due to the fact that I work full time and can't take her.
