What's wrong with Aster, and how do you pronounce it?

By and large, CHASA parents don't like being asked "What's wrong with Kid X?" because it implies that Kid X isn't right, needs fixing, is broken or wasn't as God intended (by and large, they also dislike being told that "Nothing is wrong with Kid X," but that's a subject of some other posts).  But something is wrong with Aster, otherwise I wouldn't be fighting him to put on a stiff night brace or driving 80 miles each way for a hand therapist appointment, and I wouldn't be raising much awareness through my blogging streak if I claimed otherwise.

Well, clearly something is wrong.
Perhaps The Mister gave him the wrong cup?

Available evidence suggests that Aster had a stroke while I was pregnant.  It was somewhere before 23 weeks, and probably after 18.

As a result, he had an enlarged left ventricle when measured by ultrasound at 23 weeks in utero, and an MRI done at age two shows that he has scarring around his left ventricle, consistent with a prenatal stroke.  

As a result of the stroke and related brain damage, he does not use the right side of his body the same way that he uses his left.  He was slow to crawl, slow to walk, and rarely uses his right hand.

This non-progressive permanent movement disorder falls under the general heading of cerebral palsy (CP). Specifically, he has "hemiplegic infantile cerebral palsy" with a more recently added note about "cerebrovascular accident with right hemiparesis."  The "hemiplegic" suggest that only one side of his body is affected and the "hemiparesis" suggests that he has weakness on one side, rather than actual paralysis.

Hemiplegic can be the least debilitating of the many types of CP, and Aster seems less affected, at least so far, than many others with similar diagnoses.  Childhood strokes and CP are associated with cognitive delays, sensory issues, balance issues, emotional processing issues, seizures, hip and shoulder problems and a full slew of other potential complications.  We have evidence for a few predictions, for instance, according to the pediatric neurologist, the location of Aster's damage makes it less likely that he will be prone to seizures. Good predictive factors, however, seem few and far between.  Human neural connections are remarkably plastic, but we don't know how much where or when the damage occurred matters.  We know that some CP patients have remarkable success treating "symptoms" while many others just don't. "Neurotypical" three-year-olds have a hard enough time recognizing when it is time to "go" that we just can't ask our child with hemiplegia if his unwillingness to use a potty is because one side of his body feels different than the other.  

As a mother, I'd like a better gazing ball (more on that later).

As humanity, we need more information so that we can better help kids with CP, whether or not something is wrong with them. 

By the way, I tend to go full blown American and say "suh-REE-bral" but "ser-uh-bral" is also acceptable (and I'm fine with seruble as well), if that matters to you.   Hemiplegia= "Hemi- plee-GEE-ah" if I can't get around it and "hemi-puh-lee-gic" which I know is just wrong, but is closest to how I would pronounce "quadriplegic".

Also, by the way, I think Aster is just right, even though there is something wrong with him.