Skip to main content

An Angel for Our Angels, Volume 8

"Because of Dr. Campbell, Owen is alive and thriving and able to experience so much in life! Thank you Dr. C for giving our Owen a chance! We will miss you greatly! You have truly touched so many lives!"
-Owen Theriot 


"It has taken me all day to put my thoughts onto paper. In 2002, Sarah’s medical file was taken to San Antonio to be looked at by Dr. Campbell. We were then sent to Pittsburgh for Sarah to be evaluated by Dr. Moreland. Sarah was accepted into the VEPTR program and our journey started. 

My daughter was not supposed to live past 2. She will be 18 in September. How do you put into words how grateful you are to the man that invented a device and procedures that saved your daughter's life? It is quite impossible to tell him just how much he meant to our family. The kindness, compassion, and the love he showed every time we saw him was outstanding! To think that he is gone just makes my heart so sad. He gave my family hope and a quality of life she never would of had. 

May God bless him and his family in their time of need. Praying for peace and comfort for his family. RIP Dr. Robert Campbell and thank you for all you have done for my daughter."
-Kimberly Amodei



"This is the story of my daughter Brianna Jones. She was born with a rare genetic disorder called Escobar syndrome. This syndrome mostly consist of muscular skeletal deformities, including deformities of the spine. Brianna was born with four of her thoracic vertebrae fused at birth, causing severe curvature of her spine and compression of her lungs due to the ribs not being able to expand on the affected side. When she was born, we were in the hospital for six months at Texas children’s and she had a 35° curve to her spine... by the time she was two years old her spine was 98°. 

The orthopedic doctor in Houston told me she would never walk and referred us to Dr. Campbell. Brianna also suffered from a diaphragmatic hernia at birth and has been ventilator dependent since birth. We came for our three day evaluation in August or September 2001 when she was just two years old as part of the FDA case study.  We were number 137. Dr. Campbell told me that he would take her downstairs and take her off her ventilator and if she had any breathing effort on her own he could help her. The results were that she did have effort on her own and he said he could help her. 


So it was under the care of Dr. Campbell and Dr. Smith that my daughter underwent her first titanium rib implant surgery... she continued surgeries every six months from the age of two to the age of 14 with only one wound infection and one device that was removed. She is now 19 years old almost and although still vent dependent her settings have been dramatically changed to the point that she can come off her ventilator for a couple hours twice a day. She still has two devices but her spine had finished growing.


Before the rib implants, she was getting chronic pneumonia from compression of the lungs by the rib cage. I truly believe in my heart that my daughter would not be where she is today and may not even be living had it not been for the dedication, love, and intelligence of Dr. Campbell.  


He wasn’t just a doctor.  He cared. He cared about every single child that he helped. I will forever be grateful to him and that he allow the Lord to work through his hands to save so many children’s lives. He will be greatly missed, but not forgotten."

-April Robertson

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Cerebrocostomandibular Syndrome

If you happen to pick up the latest Reader's Digest, there is an article in there about Piper Breinholt , a four year old with CCMS.  If you've been around here a while, you'll remember wayyyyyy back when we first received Abby's diagnosis that I was able to speak to Piper's mom, Reagan.  The article is more about their story and not as much about the ins and outs of CCMS, but I think it's probably enough to get some people googling it and I'm hoping a few will end up here. Every once in a while, I give a blog post the title of Cerebrocostomandibular Syndrome so that it would show up in Google.  My ever-present hope is that people will stumble across my blog and 1) be encouraged by the hope we have in Christ, 2) feel a connection with someone in a similar situation as them, or 3) get excited over the miracles that have been performed in Abby's life!!  (a combination of all 3 is great too!)  :)   Notice that it's not to get famous and it never wi

The Potty Man

Caleb LOVES to go potty! I have never heard a potty training story like this one....Caleb tells us when he needs to go, we take his diaper off, and he goes! Now, is it perfect? No, not at all! We aren't trying to potty train at at all, but we figure every time he goes is one less diaper we have to change! The only time we consistantly put him on the potty is when we give him a bath (he always pees in the tub, so we know he needs to go!) He almost always goes on the potty now instead of the tub though. When he's not "really" going potty, he's pretending to go potty! He's such a funny kid!

Lego Party: Favors

I'm a little slow in posting the Lego Party pictures, but I think I have a few excuses I could use.  At any rate, I wanted to share what I did for the party!  It will take a few posts, so stay with me.  I'll start with how I did the favors. These are the goody bags I made.  I just bought solid colored gift bags and matched scrapbook paper to each bag.  Then I punched circles and attached them with the 3D foam tape so that the circles were raised. I used the keychain (explained below) as a name tag on the outside. These are Duplo blocks.  I put a round magnet on the back and...voila!  A magnet!  (note:  hot glue doesn't work so well...I ended up reglueing them with my apoxy because the magnets fell off.) I made crayons using Lego man crayons.  Yes, I know this guy has lost half of his leg.  The others were already packaged and I didn't want to open one up just to get a picture.  I used a Lego mold  to make the crayons.  Caleb put small pieces of crayon in each m