This Weblog was composed years ago, but I was uncertain about publishing it due to the personal nature of the content.

However, on Monday, our son will turn 40 years old after a big celebration on Sunday with family and friends, so I decided the timing was right to celebrate his toughness.

A 40th birthday happens all the time, in fact it may have happened to you. However, babies born with a complicated defect known as 'spina bifida' generally don't live to see their 40th for a variety of reasons.

To make it that far, takes a lot of surgery, medications, treatments, luck, fortitude and just plain toughness.

This story has never-before-shared details of the first 72 hours of our son's life as a tribute to him, the person my father called the 'toughest Doherty for life.'

Read on to learn why.

Many readers know that my family has devoted decades of our time to the prevention of birth defects, and some of you know why. Other readers have no idea that decades were devoted. As Paul Harvey used to say: here’s the rest of the story.

On March 11, 1984, at about 9 pm, in the delivery room, we found out something was wrong. It was 40 years ago next week and healthcare was a little different then. 

The attending nurse shouted “oh sh*t when my son was born, and that began an incredible 72-hour welcome to the world for Joseph Edward Doherty and his two parents, living in California, 3,000 miles from home and friends and family. 

I had never heard the term ‘spina bifida’ before, but I was about to get a traumatic education.

After an ambulance transport to the nearest neonatal intensive care unit, we were told about the surgeries for the week: at 1 day old, a neurosurgeon would operate on his spine, and at three days old, his brain. Foot surgery and abdominal surgery would wait.

Whoa, can we slow this down a little bit? When I finally left the hospital after that meeting, I ran out and got my son a little LA Dodgers baseball hat because I guessed that the surgeon would be a Dodgers fan and I wanted a motivated scalpel in his hands. Crazy how your mind works during a crisis.

Now, my son is 12 hours old. I have moved my wife Betty out of the hospital early because she doesn’t have her baby with her. I have one blurry Polaroid photo of my son Joey through the incubator glass so I can remember what he looks like as I am sitting by a single pay phone at the end of a darkened corridor outside of SURGERY at County Hospital in Ventura as the hours slowly grind away.  

Today, I’m not sure if it was a six-hour or a three-hour operation, but it was a long, long time for a 12 hour-old baby to be in the operating room. He was born with a hole in his spine about the size of a quarter. Damage TBD. Pretty big hole for a newborn. 

This first surgery, with a significantly less than 100% chance of survival, was to pull the skin of his back over the hole and stuff his exposed nerves and more back inside and keep our fingers crossed. 

The big unknown was if he had enough skin available on his back to pull over to close the hole. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t make it because the risk of infection and death was close to 100%. My first day as a NICU dad was a real gut slammer, sitting by that payphone on a vinyl chair in shock, no smartphone to distract me, no support, no nothing except time to think and spin my brain around and around.

3,000 miles from home, and our family of three was each all alone: Betty was alone at home, Joey was alone on the table, and I was alone at the end of the corridor. Sitting there not knowing if I would ever see my little boy again was a life changing experience. Then, just like in the movies, the operating doors flew open at the other end of the hall, and I could see the silhouette of the neurosurgeon heading towards me.  

As he got closer, I could see him smile, I got covered with goose bumps and he told me that the surgery appeared to be successful and that in 48 hours he would see me back there again after he operated on Joey’s brain. 

Spina Bifida is a ‘neural tube defect’ without an established cause, except it is known that a shortage of folic acid in the mom’s system has some impact. One end of the neural tube grows into the spine and the other into the brain. The defect occurs before a woman is aware she is pregnant. 

The spine part of the problem had been mitigated, and the brain part remained to be addressed. By closing up the spine, pressure was instantly increased in the brain. Fluid on the brain, a condition known as hydrocephalus, causes the skull to gradually expand and the brain to get compressed, with poor outcomes. 

My son needed a one-way flow valve, or shunt, inserted into his brain to drain the excess fluid into his abdomen where it would be absorbed.

Had he been born five years earlier he wouldn’t have made it because this medical device and procedure hadn’t been invented.

When I see our baby again between surgeries, I am in full scrubs with iodine-washed hands and a mask, and he is sucking my thumb in the incubator.

2 days later, back at the hospital, my son is 60 hours old. I have more than one blurry Polaroid photo of him through the incubator glass so I can remember what he looks like as I am sitting by a single pay phone at the end of a darkened corridor outside of SURGERY at County Hospital in Ventura as the hours slowly grind away.  

Today, I’m not sure if was a six-hour or a three-hour operation, but it was a long, long time for a 3-day old baby to be in the operating room. Think about the chills that go with the words ‘Brain Surgery’ and then imagine a 3-day old baby having brain surgery.  No, imagine YOUR 3-day old baby having it. 

My third day as a NICU dad was a real gut slammer, sitting by that payphone on a vinyl chair in shock, no smartphone to distract me, no support, no nothing except time to think and spin my brain around and around. 3,000 miles from home, and our family of three was each all alone: Betty was alone at home, Joey was alone on the table, and I was alone at the end of the corridor. Why is this happening? How can a family be subjected to this kind of terror? 

Just like in the movies, the operating doors flew open, again, and I could see the silhouette of the neurosurgeon heading towards me at the end of the hall. Little did I know the pride I would take in a short conversation I would remember for the rest of my life. 

This time when he smiled at me, he told me that the surgical team was very happy with how things went.  I said, “he must be a pretty tough guy.” He, paused, patted me on the back and said, “he is, ……just like his old man.”

A few months later our family returned to Massachusetts for Joey’s baptism, I remember having a beer with my dad before catching the flight back. As we were talking, he expressed his amazement that my son had survived those operations and appeared to be doing ok. 

Little did he know that more than three dozen additional trips to an operating room awaited his grandson before he would turn 12. More spine, more brain, more feet, and more internal surgeries were to come. 

But based on the early returns, my dad looked me right in the eye and said, ‘there is no competition for the toughest Doherty anymore. Joey has it for life.’

My son is a pretty tough guy, to this day, and we still have the LA Dodgers hat. It worked.

Happy 40^th Birthday, Joe, you are still the toughest Doherty for life, and our hero.