Miracle Monday: With Children’s Hospital, ‘there’s so much more support’

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – Cooper Dickert was born at 28 weeks, weighing 1 pound 3 ounces.

After a couple of weeks, Cooper’s parents Chris and Christa knew Cooper would need greater care and support. That’s when they transferred to the Children’s Hospital of Georgia.

“So, it was a lot of emotion, relieved he was doing well, but uncertainty knowing there were concerns in the days to come,” Chris Dickert said.

“We’re local, so we’re blessed to have this in our backyard because we didn’t know we need it, but when you do need it, it’s nice to have it close, so you don’t have to travel a couple of hours,” he said.

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Cooper spent half his time in the neonatal intensive care unit and the other in the pediatric intensive care unit, where he celebrated his first birthday.

“There’s so much more support here being a children’s hospital because there were people who not only took care of Cooper on the medical side, but people who supported Chris and I as his parents,” said Christa Dickert.

Cooper was born with a heart defect as well as Down syndrome.

“As a dad, I wanted everything to be perfect and it really hit me hard at first because I didn’t know what to expect, and all of sudden all of those fears and ideas of the worst and negative come in,” Chris Dickert said. “But as we get to know Cooper and his personality, he is the happiest kid and brings joy to the room. It is not a deficit; it’s an addition.”

Cooper’s first surgery to correct his heart was at 6 months old.

“We were told there was the potential that Cooper wouldn’t be able to come off the heart-lung machine after open-heart surgery because of how sick he had just been, and that was terrifying,” Christa Dickert said.

But “there was nothing more relieving than watching that cardiac surgeon walk through the door with a smile on his face. and we knew that surgery had been successful,” she added.

GET INVOLVED:

• If you would like to support families like Cooper’s or learn more about Children’s Hospital of Georgia, visit https://www.augustahealth.org/give/childrens/.

With three other surgeries that followed, Cooper was finally able to go home in June of this year.

“That news that Cooper could come home and when it became real was so overwhelming and incredible,” said Christa Dickert. “It didn’t even feel real because it was that light at the end of tunnel that we had been waiting on a year.”

The Dickerts say this to any family going through something similar: Have hope.

“When you watch them fight, that produces a spark of hope in your own heart, and as long as they’re fighting, you’ve got a shot,” said Chris Dickert.

Cooper is currently on a feeding tube and ventilator and still has weekly checkups at the Children’s Hospital. His parents say more procedures are to come.

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