Since March, several viruses had entered the Eaton home, including norovirus, enterovirus and Covid-19, which had made Archie more unwell. <\/p>\n
His parents sent him back to daycare last Monday, where he caught a sniffle. <\/p>\n
By 10am on Wednesday, he had developed a cough, and by 3pm they called an ambulance based on \u201cgut instinct\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe probably would have died that night if we\u2019d kept him at home because it wasn\u2019t clear that he had deteriorated that quickly,\u201d Dan Eaton said. <\/p>\n
Dan Eaton (back left) pictured with his wife Coral, his daughter Lily and his son Archie.<\/p>\n
Archie has a genetic condition that is so rare, his version of it does not have a specific name. <\/p>\n
Seconds after he was conceived, a section of his 12th chromosome was deleted and replaced with a copy of a section of his 6th chromosome. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere are no literature or case studies about it,\u201d Eaton said. <\/p>\n
This unbalanced translocation of his chromosomes has caused him to have a series of health issues. <\/p>\n
Archie has central hypotonia, also known as floppy infant syndrome, which means his muscles have very low tone so he struggles to use them. <\/p>\n
He cannot sit, crawl, walk or talk, and has hearing loss, respiratory issues and complications with digestion. <\/p>\n
All of this is made worse by his inability to eat food orally, or keep food down. <\/p>\n
Archie had a unbalanced translocation of his chromosomes which has caused him to have a series of health issues. <\/p>\n
Archie was born prematurely and immediately admitted to the Wellington Neonatal Intensive Care Unit as a \u201cvery, very small baby\u201d, according to his father. <\/p>\n
He used to be fed through a nasogastric tube before he began vomiting all of his food up and dropping weight he could not afford to lose. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe had some really bad weeks where he was vomiting about 15 times a day,\u201d Eaton recalled. <\/p>\n
In October, the then-8-month-old had an operation to reduce his vomiting and to get a MIC-KEY button inserted for direct feeding into his stomach. <\/p>\n
Eaton said that, through it all, Archie had remained a \u201csweet-natured\u201d, \u201ccurious\u201d and \u201ckind\u201d little boy. <\/p>\n
\u201cFor everything that\u2019s been happening to him up until this point, he\u2019s just borne it with so much dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Archie being held by his older sister Lily.<\/p>\n
When Archie was being rushed to hospital, he experienced some oxygen deprivation which doctors said increased his risk of suffering brain damage. <\/p>\n
He had been sedated for several days and was now slowly being woken up. <\/p>\n
For Archie\u2019s parents, the uncertainty was the worst part.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe could grow up to be a fairly independent adult with his own hopes and dreams … or he could be severely disabled and require life-long care from Coral and I,\u201d Eaton said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had to grieve his future a few times.\u201d<\/p>\n
The early indications they had received were that Archie was \u201cgood\u201d after developing pneumonia, but his recovery would be \u201ca long, long road\u201d.<\/p>\n
Janhavi Gosavi is a Wellington-based journalist for the New Zealand Herald who covers news in the capital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since March, several viruses had entered the Eaton home, including norovirus, enterovirus and Covid-19, which had made Archie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,15408,13633,9525,4509,8344,1239,85768,44295,6179,1595,71,2286,111,43,139,69,211070,43662,13835,5427,52,102],"class_list":["post-501399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-almost","tag-catching","tag-caught","tag-cold","tag-common","tag-condition","tag-daycare","tag-developing","tag-died","tag-disorder","tag-from","tag-genetic","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-oneofakind","tag-pneumonia","tag-toddler","tag-unique","tag-wellington","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}