Vitek Chalupa
Here is a picture of our son Vitek. He is 8 now, his Cri-du-Chat diagnosis
was recognized when he was 3 weeks old.
He has only one kidney. We were informed about sad prognoses, but we are lucky that he is doing progress and that there is a lot of fun and joy with him. He started to crawl in 18 months and he walks since 3,5 years. Now he can walk and run quite well.
He understands almost everything, he speaks quite well (and permanently!), mostly in the short sentences. He can well express what he wants to. He recognizes figures 0 to 9 and almost all the characters (in upper case). We are very proud on his capabilities, especially comparing them with our expectations 8 years ago.
Several hours during the day is Vitek in the first class of the special school for mentally handicaped children. He likes the school and he is proud being educated. His great hobby are cars - he spends a lot of time by studying the car magazines and he can recognize and name almost all the cars worldwide!
We think that Vitek's example can encourage other parents having younger Cri-du-Chat child in their expectations. We will be lucky to share our experience with other people engaging in the care of Cri-du-Chat children.
We live in the Central Europe - the Czech Republic. The contact e-mail address is pavel.chalupa@heitec.cz. On the picture (taken in April 99) you can see some Easter habits which are still alive especially in the villages. The guys walk around and "carol" for the Easter eggs.
Best regards and good luck with the nice site!
Pavel and Eliska
family Chalupa
Email : pavel.chalupa@heitec.cz