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| photos courtesy of family |
| Murphy...A Special Gift |
| To Whom It May Concern: This thank you note is EXTREMELY late and my husband and I appologize. We didnt forget the wonderful gift you sent us after our son was born, August 28, 2002, and only weighed in at 5lbs 14ozs. Your clothes, blanket and other beautiful gifts were greatly appreciated, used and a wonderful suprise for us. Murphy was born at Riverside Hospital in Columbus. He was diagnosed with Down syndrome 36 hours he was born. Our lives have been very blessed and BUSY since then. He is healthy, beautiful, sweet and BIG!!! He is now over 24lbs, not bad for a 10 month old. He is doing great and his parents are finally relaxing a little, just in time for him to crawl. Please let all your volunteers that their hard work and kindness was especially appreciated during our time of need and shock. He still uses his quilt that was in his basket. Thank you again and God Bless all of you. You are doing a great thing. Love Chris, Tina and Murphy Christopher Thomas Vetter (his name was longer than he was when he was born.) I have attached a recent photo of Murphy (our sweet little churb angel) for all of you to enjoy. (Ed Note: Marianne emailed Tina requesting permission to post Murhpy's picture and her email to the TLL webite. Below is the response.) Yes you may. However, if you are going to post his story my husband and I thought you'd like to hear the best part of Murphy's story. He was born 8/28/02, 2 weeks premature. His due date was 9/11. I told my doctor no way was he going to be born on the anniversary of the worst day in history and he wasn't . It seemed like a nightmare at the time, premature, Down syndrome, no idea how to handle what we were about to undertake, but now when we look back, it was the BEST day of our lives. I had all the test's ran on me that a 36 yr old pregnant woman has done to make sure that he didn't have any major medical problems. We had 2 test's ran to check for Down syndrome and were told we had a better chance of winning the lottery than him having Downs. The only test that would absolutely tell us if he did or didn't have DS was the amnio but it had a higher risk of miscarriage, and since we had already had 4 miscarriages we decided to take our chances and rely on the blood work and high definition ultrasound to be right. Not to mention, it wasn't as if we would of aborted the baby anyway. It would have just made me worry myself sick instead of being relaxed like I had been. God knew what he was doing. 2 weeks before our son was born a young man that my husband coached in little league football, drown in the Worthington pool. Chris (my husband) was devestated by this loss, we all were but they were very close and he took it very hard. We had decided on our sons name being Christopher Thomas Vetter, but Chris asked me if I minded adding Murphy to the mix in memory of Murphy Shurig, I said no problem. We just didn't know where we were going to add the Murphy part of it to his name, after Christopher or after Thomas but it was NEVER going to be his first name. Murphy Shurig was a dynamic young man. He was caring, excitable, funny, athletic and loved to volunteer for the Special Olympics. He was the youngest SO coach in Ohio and one of the youngest in the country. Our son was born exactly 2 weeks after Murphy Shurig passed away. When they put our son into my arms there was this hush that fell over the hospital room. You could feel the warmth and "angelic" presence in the room. At that moment everyone who was there, Chris, myself and our mothers (who both hated the idea of Murphy being in the name) all said in unison, MURPHY. At that moment there was no question what his name should be....Murphy Christopher Thomas Vetter. Even my doctor felt it was perfect. The irony of this story is that 36 hours after Murphy was born we were told that he had Down syndrome. Chris still says that Murphy Shurig planned it for us. That he told God if you are going to give anyone a DS child Coach Vetter and Coach Tina (I coach cheerleading, my husband football) that it should be us. Chris thanks Murphy Shurig everynight for telling God that, our life is so perfect now. To make things better we received the beautiful gift from all of you. Murphy still loves his quilt. He is over 25 lbs now, not bad for only weighing 5 lbs 14 ozs when he was born. Hes doing great. No major medical problems, eating us out of house and home and just about ready to crawl, he's only 10 months. The clothes you sent to us were a god send, the onesies were perfect and it was so unexpected. It came to us at a time when we didn't have many happy feelings or thoughts so it was wonderful. We'd love for you to combine the stories and post it to all your volunteers. Just promise me that you'll send me a copy. Thanks again and God Bless. Love Tina Vetter |
| ...printed with permission from author... |
