Fairmount,

Very kind of you to start a thread to honor Cody. I share a heavy heart for his parents & sister. Hope he will have everlasting peace and the same for his family.


I would also like to take this time to share a story of my own. Me and my wife were lucky to have a son, and he was born in the same year as Cody. He was born 8 weeks premature and spent six weeks in the neonatal icu. Less than fifteen minutes after giving birth to this wonderful child, my wife and I were converged on by approx or seven different doctors to speak about our new child. A child that we spent over 280,000 dollars trying to have through in vitro fertilization.

The appearance of my child and some other distinguishing features like having Simian creases in both of his hands, having both clubbed feet, pre-mature birth, jaundice, under developed lungs and so on, gave the doctors the impression my son had Down syndrome or that syndrome Cody had Wolf-Hirschonn, and possibly some others. They preceded to do a battery of genetic testing to determine if there was any chromosones missing, deleted or altered.

To hear this after 30 minutes of my wife giving birth, that in itself was chaotic, was a real gut punch. After a battery of tests, he was finally diagnosed at age 12 with autism. His feet are somewhat straight after seven surgeries, and is a brilliant kid in high school now.

when I read that story, it brought me back to the time my son was born and the possibilty of life long care he might need. I did not care about anything else except for the best care of my child and his life. He is right that you just roll with the punches and just keep moving forward, but loosing your child is something that I do not want to witness.

One time we where at the University of Chicago for an Mri for a barin condition he has, and we saw a kid that was about 8 years old next door with no hair, gettng prepped for surgery. I put my self into that parents shoe and started crying thinking what if that was my son, his issue pales in comparison to what that family is going through.
Thanks for reading this, and let's donate to Make-A-wish in Cody's name.
It's the least we can do, if you put youself into the Dorman's familiy's shoe.