Loving Isaiah

Surviving Apert’s Syndrome

Love. As I began this week looking for a picture story on love, Isaiah was not the first idea in my head. To be honest, the idea wasn’t even on my short list. I had two stories fall through this week before asking Isaiah’s parents to let me into their lives. I met Timmy and Nicki Buchanon at church and have known of them for a few years. Isaiah’s story has crossed my mind before but I had always put it off because I didn’t feel I was ready to tell it correctly.
This week I felt that I was ready and had two of the best day’s of shooting I could have asked for. Despite his conditions, Isaiah lives a rich and busy life that revolves around Love. Isaiah’s condition can best be described by his mom:

From Isaiah’s Website:

Isaiah Montgomery Buchanon was born on January 11, 2005 at Vanderbilt Hospital. He was born at 7:08 am weighing in at 8lbs and 10 ounces and 21 inches long. At 20 weeks gestation an ultrasound determined that Isaiah’s head did not measure correctly. At 27 weeks our journey of testing, ultrasounds, and the unknown began.

When he was born the doctors knew they were correct in their abnormal findings. Isaiah’s obvious problems were mitten hands, syndactly of the feet, cleft palate, and his brain was protruding from his skull in the forehead area. After giving his mommy and daddy a chance to hold him, he was rushed to the NICU. On January 12, 2005 a clinical diagnosis determined Isaiah has Aperts Syndrome. He then spent 11 days in the NICU to establish his feeding and wean him down to a low enough oxygen rate he could go home. We then went home with oxygen and numerous other machines. His journey of operations began on April 12, 2005. All of Isaiah’s operations have been performed by the staff and surgeons of Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital. To date Isaiah has been in the operating room around 30 times. The surgeries have varied from minor to very complex. Some trips have been for a simple central line and others have been for major craniofacial surgeries and a tracheostomy was performed on August 30, 2006. He is on a home vent due to central apnea.

With Isaiah’s syndrome come many difficult surgeries. Then with Isaiah being himself come many more complications. Isaiah is developmentally delayed physically and cognitivelly. Things such as sitting, crawling, walking, and speech are a huge obstical for Isaiah. Isaiah has very small airways(which go with his syndrome) which has caused huge issues since birth and eventually he was unsuccessful being pulled from a breathing tube, this caused him to have to have a trach. Isaiah also suffers from severe seizures which seem to come with no prediction. Along with these problems comes a whole list which you can read about in the journal.

I hope you will pray for and follow updates on Isaiah at his website which is run by his mom and dad here

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 9:19 am. It is filed under Featured Work, Spring 2009 and tagged with wide. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.