June 14th, 2012

Jacob was born in a small northern California hospital, in 2000, but was transferred shortly thereafter to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.  He spent 13 days there but unlike the experience many families have, because of the big city staffing, he had a positive diagnosis within days.  Although many of the manifestations were quite obvious, numerous examinations and tests were performed, finding among other things, amblyopia or a lazy eye (like Paris Hilton), undescended testes, a horseshoe kidney (like Mel Gibson) which has never given him any trouble, extra fingers and toes, many of which were webbed, a minor heart defect, and craniosynostosis (no "soft spots", like baseball player Jorge Posada's son). 

Between the Carpenter Syndrome and other unrelated issues, his prognosis for any sort of productive life, was bleak.