Greetings from St Louis!

Sitting in a hotel room in St. Louis, it occurs to me that some do not know the story of my oldest and heir apparent to the Spencersb throne, "Poppa's Boy." First, how he got his name: "Poppa" is my dad, who died in 1998. He and Tim were big Buds! Tim could do no wrong! I'm grateful that Tim at least got to know him. I never knew either of my grandfathers.

Timothy was our first child. [my now-ex-wife] and I were married on 30 October 1992, and on Christmas morning she gave me a "present." She crawled back into bed and told me "that sucker is so pink it ain't even funny!" Took me a few seconds to figure out what she was talking about!

The pregnancy went normally, until [my now-ex-wife]'s water broke at 11:30 at night! She would be in labor for almost 24 hours! At one point during that time, Tim's heart rate dropped. We didn't think anything about it at the time, but when he was six months old and still couldn't turn over, we started to believe something was wrong. He was diagnosed with Hypotonia (weak muscles, a mild form of Cerebral Palsy) and "developmental delay."

Part of Tim's condition is poor motor skills, which causes him to walk on the outsides of his feet. He may have also had a congenital predisposition to "clubfoot," so in the past couple of years, his feet have gotten progressively deformed. It was getting very painful for him to walk any sort of distance at all. So last year, my lovely and indispensible wife [my now-ex-wife] took the bull by the horns and got us approved for treatment at the Shriner's Hospital in St. Louis.

In January, they operated on both feet to straighten and flatten them. The surgery went fine, but at the second followup visit, they discovered a raging infection in the inside incisions of both feet! Tim and I ended up in the hospital in St. Louis for nine days!! Even once we got sent home, [my now-ex-wife] and I have had to change the sterile dressing on his feet twice a day, allowing the incisions to heal from the inside out.

So that's where Tim and I are now, in a Holiday Inn in St. Louis. He has an 8:30 appointment tomorrow morning. I'll post an update when we get back home (which I hope will be tomorrow night, and not ten days from now!