{"id":218187,"date":"2020-02-10T16:45:34","date_gmt":"2020-02-10T22:45:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=218187"},"modified":"2020-02-25T12:56:04","modified_gmt":"2020-02-25T18:56:04","slug":"doctors-9-chance-surviving-thriving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/doctors-9-chance-surviving-thriving\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctors gave him a 9% chance of surviving. Now, he’s thriving."},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

When Christina DiMartino was 13 weeks pregnant, she got devastating news. Doctors told her that her preborn baby had a large mass which was likely to take his life. Yet rather than accepting the bad news, DiMartino chose life and spent months researching to find ways to save her son. That hard work paid off, and now her son is not only alive, but thriving.<\/p>\n

In 2018, DiMartino was told her baby had a rare lymphatic malformation on the side of his body, causing a cyst the size of his head. Their doctors said the baby had just a 9% chance of survival — yet they decided to continue the pregnancy, and DiMartino spent every available chance she could researching his condition, known as cystic hygroma<\/a>. And though she was determined to save her son’s life, she was also scared. \u201cEvery day that went by, we\u2019d wonder if today was the day,\u201d she said in an interview with Newsday<\/a>. \u201cIt was definitely stressful and became almost crippling during my pregnancy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her drive to save her son caused her a lot of sleepless nights. “My husband would wake up in the middle of the night and see my phone illuminating my face and have to take my phone away or yell at me just go to sleep,” she said at a press conference<\/a>. “But there was — there was no sleep for, I would say seven months, since I found out about his diagnosis until he was born.”<\/p>\n