Hi! It's me again. You know, Bryan! Well, I thought I would show you a picture of my Mommy and my Grandma and Grandpa Burton first. This was taken a year before I came along. Wow, Mommy was skinny then!! Grandma and Grandpa look the same though. They live in Great Falls. I use to live there too. I really miss them

Here is my very first picture. This ultrasound was done on March 6th 1992. The only reason my Mommy had an ultrasound was that her tummy was really really big! My Mommy learned about all my medical problems after this ultrasound. The doctors told Mommy and Daddy that babies like me die. They actually thought it was too late to save me! Yeah right! They don't know the Burtons and Dowdles! The doctors said there was a surgery that might have helped if they had found out earlier, but it was too late for me. My Mommy and Grandma were the only ones who could see me in this picture. Can you?

Oh wow! This is my Mommy one week before I was born! Look at that tummy!! She didn't expect me for another six weeks, but I was getting really cramped in there. My Grandpa called my Mommy Shamu! My Mommy's doctor was really nice. He saw Mommy a lot to make sure I was still ok. He even spent his lunchtime talking to Mommy, Grandma, and Grandpa.

I was born five weeks early at the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. My kidneys weren't working well at all, but I was alive. Of course the doctors kept telling Mommy that I would die. I'm too stubborn for that! I had posterior urethral valves while I was in Mommy and I couldn't go potty. I was still drinking in all of that amniotic fluid though and it just got stuck inside my bladder, ureters, and kidneys. Most of the time, babies like me don't have lungs that work because we drink in all the amniotic fluid and there is none left to practice breathing with. My lungs were small, but they sure do work fine now! Oh, there I am. I don't think there was anything more they could stick into me. I had my IV's, my catheter, EKG's, feeding tube, oxygen level thingy, and of course my shades for the bilirubin lights (babies born early like me are usually jaundice). I was on a ventilator right after I was born, but only for a few hours.

Mommy and Daddy had to wear funny yellow robes when they came to see me in the intensive care nursery. It was kind of scary in there with all of the machines and tiny babies who were born a lot earlier than I was. I didn't eat well, so they had to put a yucky feeding tube down my throat. Sometimes they put it down my nose. I had special formula with lots of calories, but I still needed to drink more than I was willing to.

Mommy and I hung out in Salt Lake City until I was three weeks old. Mommy got to stay at the Ronald McDonald House. This was Mommy's room at the Ronald McDonald House.

Then the doctors said I was getting sicker and needed to start dialysis. They told Mommy and Daddy that I needed to move near a big medical center. My Mommy and Daddy decided we would go to Seattle. We went to Children's Hospital and Medical Center in Seattle, Washington. After I got there, I started to do better! I was eating and they took out that nasty feeding tube. I had to have another surgery when I was a month old. This time they put holes right into my kidneys. That's called a pyelostomy. It was kind of interesting for Mommy to diaper me. I had to wear really big diapers that almost went up to my armpits! The doctors in Seattle said that I didn't need to move there! I just had to come back for a visit every three or four months.

While Mommy and I were in Seattle, my Great Aunt Mary and Great Uncle Rob came to visit. They have three kids (Mommy's cousins). There's AJ, Paul, Mommy and me and Tracy.

Finally when I was almost two months old, I got to go home to Great Falls, Montana. My Mommy had to learn how to give me ouchy shots and yucky medicine before we could go home, but she did it. She was as excited about taking me home as I was of going! We got to live at my Grandma's house for a few months while Daddy went to tech school for the Montana Air National Guard. My Great-Grandma and Grandpa from California came to visit me too!

When I was really little, I got to do a lot of fun things. I got to go to Utah and see my other Great-Grandma and Grandpa. I got to meet my other Grandma from Memphis Tennessee. I got to go to California and meet more realitives. I even got to go to Mt. Rushmore!

My Mommy use to babysit these girls when they all lived in Oregon. Their Daddy worked with my Grandpa. They are a lot bigger now. They are Erin, Andrea, and Shannon. There is another girl, but Katy isn't in the picture. On the right is the girls with me all grown up!!!

This picture has my Great-Grandma and Grandpa Burton and all of their Great-Grandkids! There is Christopher, Emily, me, Cassie and Travis is in the front.

Well, I did pretty good the first 10 months or so. I was eating and taking my medicine and my blood work was ok, but finally my doctors decided I had to start dialysis. They decided to close all my extra holes, take out the posterior urethral valves, remove one of my kidneys (it wasn't working), taper and reimplant my remaining ureter as well as put in a peritoneal dialysis catheter all at once. I had severe vesicoureteral reflux and megaureters as well as a very small and thick walled bladder. My Mommy was so worried. I was in surgery for over 12 hours. She didn't feel good either because she had just had her gallbladder removed the week before! Good thing Grandma was there to take care of us! What scared Mommy even more was that the different teams of doctors didn't seem to talk to each other at all! The kidney doctors wanted to put me on dialysis that very night, but the surgeons said there was no way, they had done so much I would leak. Of course the kidney doctors did what they wanted and I leaked. Then they let it heal a little, but the catheter didn't work. They did surgery again for a new one and then the doctors thought I should wait and they let me go home for a week for my first birthday! When I got back to Seattle, my new catheter didn't work either! I had to have yet another surgery. Well, I got my third catheter and went home. My Mommy and I were in Seattle for almost two months that time! It was a LONG trip. You can see the picture that the surgeon drew to show what this big surgery would look like HERE. Dr. Burns draws silly looking people!