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Show New March o' Dimes Funds Help Eric, Birth Defects Victim, Reach Age of 2 I , - Eric Brantner is a frail and appealing little boy who achieved the age of two years the other day in his crossroads home at Palouse, Wash. Held in his mother's arms on that great day, blue-eyed Eric could recognize his birthday well-wishers, among them his dancing hound-dog, Jupiter. But not so long ago, Eric wasn't given much time by most doctors doc-tors to enjoy Jupiter or other members of the household. He was born three momhs prematurely prema-turely and also developed an enlarged head (hydrocephalus) due to excess fluid on the brain. His despairing parents, Gail and Vonda Brantner, did not believe that a second birthday was in the cards for Eric. Then, as the head grew alarmingly larger on the insubstantial insub-stantial body, members of the Whitman County Chapter of The National Foundation came forward with an offer of March of Dimes funds if they were needed for patient aid. They were urgently needed. Eric was rushed to Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane, 65 miles away. There, at the age of 10 months, he underwent surgery for nearly four hours. The surplus fluid was drained away, relieving the pressure on the brain caused by blockage, block-age, and a plastic tube was inserted in-serted to keep the accumulating fluid flowing from the head to the blood stream near the heart. Although Eric's appearance today belies his two years the little boy looks scarcely ' more than six months old the , doctors' view is that he now : has a good chance of survival. He cannot sit . up by himself and he is only just learning to toddle uncertainly in a baby walker. But he engages in live-i live-i ly play with his mother and father, who is a section hand i for the Great Northern Rail- I way, with his doting brother ' Mark, three years, and of course j with his frisky but gentle four- footed companion, Jupiter. Eric enjoys the dubious distinction dis-tinction of being one of the first victims of a significant On second birthday, which his parents never expected Erie to celebrate, his mother Vonda Brantner holds him aloft. birth defect to be given patient aid in continental United States under The National Foundation's Founda-tion's expanded program, which includes arthritis in addition to continued work in polio. (The first instance of patient aid under this new program occurred oc-curred last year in Hone-lulu where the local chapter expended ex-pended March of Dimes contributions contri-butions to care for a Hawaiian infant born with the birth defect de-fect of an open spine; the baby today is well along the road to a normal life.) Otherwise, Eric's plight is not singular. Each year in this country, 250,000 infants are born with significant defects and 34,000 of them are stillborn or die within four weeks. The National Foundation, which helped develop both the Salk and the Sabin polio preventives with March of Dimes funds, moved into the area of birth defects because these congenital congeni-tal malformations comprise the largest unmet childhood medical medi-cal problem in the nation today. With generous support of the New March of Dimes in January, Janu-ary, hopefully the number of Erics will in time be many thousands fewer. |