“Trust your gut as a parent … There’s nothing else more important than being in tune with your children,” said the girl’s dad, Nick Darpino
Credit: Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- A couple saved their 16-month-old daughter from a potentially life-threatening brain tumor after trusting their gut instincts
- “You know your kid. There’s nothing else more important than being in tune with your children,” said the dad, Nick Darpino
- After the girl, Jovi, was “brought back to life so many times” during surgery, her tumor has been successfully removed
A Colorado couple saved their 16-month-old daughter from a potentially life-threatening brain tumor — and it was all thanks to their gut instincts.
In March, Chesney and Nick Darpino took their daughter, Jovi, to Children's Hospital Colorado in Colorado Springs after noticing that she wasn't acting quite like herself. And upon getting checked out by a doctor, the family received news they never expected to hear.
“She was inconsolably crying and just very sick,” Chesney recalled to local outlet KKTV. “Our pediatrician said to take her to the emergency room.”
“The doctor came into the room and told my husband and I to sit down,” she continued. “He said, ‘This is really bad. She has a mass in her brain, and we need to act now.' ”
While describing the news as the “worst thing you could imagine,” Nick went on to emphasize that he and his wife were only able to get their daughter the treatment she needed because they trusted their instincts.
“Trust your gut as a parent,” he said. “You know your kid. There's nothing else more important than being in tune with your children.”
“If you're noticing something that might seem off or if there's something that you just want to look into, it's better to have that peace of mind that you actually are doing what you know to rule out anything and then go from there,” he added.
Credit: Alamy Stock Photo
Chesney recalled Jovi being “brought back to life so many times” as the doctors attempted to drain the pressure from their daughter's brain, where the non-cancerous tumor was blocking spinal fluid from going down to her spinal cord.
“They knew exactly what to do to treat her and to help her,” she said of Jovi's care team. “They told us we were at the perfect place at the perfect time to save her life. Even through the worst moments of our lives, we have encountered the best people.”
Even after Jovi's tumor was successfully removed, one of her doctors paid her a visit to check on her recovery weeks later.
“It meant a lot to just have him come in and be able to be with her and take a picture with her, with her smiling and happy, and have him see, you know, you're the reason that she's still here,” Nick said of the sweet visit.
Read the full article here
