Weeks after revealing that he was diagnosed with “irreversible brain damage,” Meghan King Edmonds says her 13-month-old son Hart is making “great progress” on his health journey.
In an Instagram post on Friday, the Real Housewives of Orange County star, 34, explained that Hart has been undergoing hyperbaric oxygen therapy According to the Mayo Clinic, the therapy increases the amount of oxygen in the blood and is used to treat several medical conditions.
“Four times a week either [husband Jim Edmonds] or I ‘dive’ with Hart in a hyperbaric compressed oxygen chamber (HBOT),” she captioned a photo of herself giving her son a kiss on the cheek. “After 5 dives we are already seeing progress: lifting his left leg on stairs when his right is restrained, bear crawling (perhaps trying to stand?), more willingly taking steps with assistance, and cruising from the couch to the coffee table.”
“Is it because of this alternative therapy, is it because he’s just getting older, is it because of PT, or is it because of his 3x/weekly chiropractor visits? Who knows, but it’s not hurting!” she wrote. “Go Hart, go!”
One day later, on Saturday, Edmonds shared an Instagram Story video of Hart standing and moving between the couch and a nearby coffee table.
“Omg!” she captioned the footage. “This is such great progress!!”
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Earlier this month, the mom of three — who also shares Hart’s twin brother Hayes, 13 months, and daughter, Aspen, 2, with husband Jim — revealed that Hart has “minor Periventricular Leukomalacia on both sides of his brain” and is “at risk for being diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy.”
In an interview with Page Six, published on Tuesday, Edmonds said that she felt “relief” after learning his diagnosis.
“I was in my car leaving my new house that we’re building, and [the doctor] started telling me, ‘He has damage to some white matter in his brain,’ ” she said. “It was a relief. It was vindication in a weird, twisted way. Vindication I didn’t want, but I knew that I would get.”
Edmonds added, “I really wanted nothing more than to just be a crazy hypochondriac mother, but I knew I wasn’t. Because of that diagnosis, I got him into all these therapies.”
Edmonds — who has previously documented her son’s time at physical therapy — also said in a recent interview with the Daily Mail that Hart’s brain damage “is not progressive.”
“We don’t yet know how it will affect the rest of his life, like speaking in sentences or his physical abilities,” she explained to the outlet. “I’m just hoping that all the early intervention stuff we’re doing now is going to help him and by kindergarten, he won’t be doing any more therapy at all.”
“He will essentially have grown out of his diagnoses,” Edmonds added.
Edmonds first shared the news of the diagnosis in a blog post titled “My Hart,” writing, “From the minute he was born I knew something was different with Hart,” also adding, “The nurses struggled to straighten his legs to measure his length. He suckled hard, shallow, and often until I bled and he spit up black … Well, I knew. I always knew. I just knew.”
Throughout the distressing journey to find Hart’s diagnosis, Edmonds said she communicated with her husband, whom she confirmed she was still married to despite his recent admission that he “engaged in an inappropriate conversation” with another woman (but denied having a physical relationship).
“That night Jimmy and I went out to dinner for the first time in weeks,” she wrote of the day she told her husband about Hart’s diagnosis. “I explained to Jimmy how we are not somehow compromised or punished for having a child with special needs (whatever that may or may not mean!), we are BLESSED.”
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