As I mentioned in my previous post, we have been sorting through our pictures. Carmen’s pictures bring back so many memories. She was such a pleasant, easy-going baby. She was so content and happy. I hate saying that in past tense. Carmen seems peaceful and content now but very little of Carmen remains. Tay Sachs has taken so much from her.

I found a picture of Carmen in her Baby Einstein exersaucer. She LOVED that thing. She would smack the animal sounds button over and over. Moo, moo, quack, quack!

My friend Nicole let us borrow the exersaucer for Carmen. Nicole was the first person who knew about the possibility of Carmen having Tay Sachs. In fact, she knew before we did. Nicole babysat Lauren while I took Carmen to her pediatric ophthalmologist visit. We thought maybe Carmen was having some vision trouble that was contributing to her developmental delays. The pediatric ophthalmologist took one look in Carmen’s eyes and said she saw something she had only read about- cherry red spots. She immediately called and scheduled an appointment with a retina specialist for later that day. We had no earthly idea what cherry red spots were or the horrid diseases associated with them. I went back to Nicole’s house to pick up Lauren before the retina specialist appointment and told Nicole about the cherry red spots. Nicole’s husband is an optometrist so she found one of his medical books and looked up cherry red spots. She started reading out loud, abruptly stopped and said, “We aren’t going to read about this.” I’m really thankful she didn’t give me the horrible description of Tay Sachs!

Here is a picture of Carmen in the exersaucer, March 2007