Real Housewives of Orange County‘s Meghan King shared in a blog post on Tuesday that her 2-year-old son, Hart, was diagnosed with hypotonic cerebral palsy — an update to his larger health story she shared in 2019 about his irreversible brain damage.
In her post, King shared that “the moment Hart was born” she said shecould tell “something was atypical” — noticing some changes in behavior and development that differed from her other kids.
“All the doctors and therapists told me I was just being an overly cautious mother. I thought I was losing my mind, but I insisted upon an MRI. That MRI confirmed a diagnosis of Periventricular Leukomalacia or PVL which is brain death caused by lack of oxygen. This is often a precursor diagnosis to Cerebral Palsy,” she wrote. “Since that diagnosis I threw myself into researching treatments. I spoke with doctors in Chile, Panama, and Egypt. I spent 6 weeks in Los Angeles with Hart doing intensive therapy. I spent 4 weeks in New Orleans going into an oxygen chamber with him every day. I continued the oxygen therapy in St Louis for an additional 8 weeks for a total of 60 “dives”. I tried (and failed) to get him into a stem cell study at Duke using his sister’s cord blood. I got him signed up with the Missouri state program, First Steps, to do every type of therapy available. I researched and found private therapists when we traveled so we never skipped a beat. I did all of this between his first and second birthdays.””
While a diagnosis like this can be complicated to process, King shared that for her it was ultimately a relief to get a real substantial answer: “I was expecting this diagnosis. Even though he’s the same kid I expected it to hit me hard. But it didn’t. It didn’t hit me hard at all. In fact I felt relieved.”
While getting answers on your child’s health journey and sharing it with family, fans and loved ones for support is great, there’s reportedly an issue with Hart’s father, King’s estranged husband Jim Edmonds saying he didn’t know about the diagnosis and felt troubled it was being shared with the public before being shared with him. In a statement to PEOPLE, Edmonds rep Steve Honig said “Jim is unaware of any such diagnosis and, if it is even true, it is completely unconscionable and absolutely disgraceful that Meghan would announce this on social media without discussing it with him first.”
As for Hart, King does report that he is a regular happy toddler and that they are happy to celebrate World Cerebral Palsy Day as a family: “Hart is doing wonderfully. He is hardly considered “delayed” in any of his milestones and is functioning right alongside other kids his age. He runs around on the playground, he’s started identifying colors, he speaks in full sentences (sometimes), and finishes the ends of our nightly prayers. He even started preschool this year!”
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