Arthur Kirkland Winship Carpenter

On September 24, Connor's first Carpenter boy cousin was born!  Sweet baby Arthur was born at 12:10.  He was 7 lbs, 9 oz, and a little bit more than 20 inches long.

Because of his family history of heart defects, and his older sister dying right before she turned 2 months old, Arthur's parents, Myers and Laura, had the nurses and doctors do a complete blood work up on him.  Unfortunately, it did not come out as we all would have liked.  His blood showed that he has almost no neutrophils, a white blood cell responsible for attacking bacteria.  This condition is called alloimmune neutropina.  The reason he doesn't have any white blood cells is that antibodies from Laura's body crossed the placenta and they are attacking the neutrophils.  Basically, he has no defense against any sort of bacterial infection.  They thought, okay fine, we'll just keep him at home and limit visitors for the first two months, at which point the antibodies should die off and his immune system would become normal.  Unfortunately, a couple days after being home, Arthur developed a bellybutton infection, which landed Laura and him in the hospital.

I'll write about our trip up there later, for for now, know that Arthur's infection is clearing up well, but his neutrophils are still horribly low, and treatment is getting complicated, mostly because of the lack of knowledge about this disorder.  It is very rare, and treatment of it is even more rare.

You can keep up with what's going on with Arthur on his blog, at arthurcarpenter.com.

Please pray for this family and all of us.  We all pray that this will be over in just a few weeks.

Please God, help Arthur's body to work correctly.  Help him fight off this infection, help his neutrophils to overcome the attack of the antibodies, and help the antibodies to die quickly and not reproduce.  Help Laura to take care of herself and both Laura and Myers to be strong, but also to grieve the loss of these first precious days of being a family under one roof, and all the knowledge this discovery of Arthur's condition is giving them into the death of our sweet Gwen.