In a session of few accomplishments, a touch of joy, hope
By LUCY MORGAN
Published June 7, 2003
In all the bad news that has come from the state Legislature these days, there is one spot of good news.
Consider the story of "Iron Will."
Will is very young and very tiny to have developed a nickname based on his ability to survive, but he has overcome almost every obstacle to reach the ripe old age of 4 months and 14 days.
Will should have been born about the time he came home from the hospital last week. Instead, he chose Jan. 28 - at week 22 in his mother's pregnancy.
At birth, Will weighed 1.3 pounds. Few gave him any chance of surviving such an early birth. Only a very few babies born in the 22nd week of a pregnancy have survived anywhere in the world.
But Will has steadily overcome the odds, gaining weight until he topped 5 pounds by the time he went home with his parents a week ago. Friday he was up to 5 pounds, 10 ounces and was keeping his parents up half the night, just like any normal baby.
Mom is Rep. Loranne Ausley, a Tallahassee Democrat. Dad is Tallahassee lawyer Bill Holliman. Ausley has spent much of this year's horrid session dashing back and forth between the idiots in the Capitol and the neonatal unit at the hospital.
Will's doctor is Dr. Todd Patterson, whom Ausley defeated in a runoff before she was elected to the House in 2000. They've become close friends.
"Only a handful of these babies have survived," Patterson said as he described Will's recovery. "It is truly a miracle."
Patterson said he never offered any hope for Will's survival in the beginning because he considered it such a long shot.
Will has already made his first airplane trip and traveled out of state so doctors in Michigan could remove a cataract and examine his eyes. Although he is not out of the woods yet, detached retinas seem to be reattaching on their own, and vision may be his to claim some day.
Ausley, the daughter of well-known Tallahassee lawyer Dubose Ausley, is taking life with her first baby one day at a time and credits much of Will's success to the prayers of family and friends.
She sends periodic e-mail updates to a long list of friends who want to keep in touch with Will's struggle to survive.
Slowly everyone has become more and more optimistic about Will's chance to live a normal life. His vital organs are functioning well, helped along by only a little oxygen each day.
For a time it appeared that Will might never see. The doctors found a cataract on one eye and feared that both retinas were detached. Miraculously, the retinas seem to be reattaching on their own and the cataract was successfully removed.
"An answer to our prayers," says Ausley.
Will's coming home "was the end of a long journey and the beginning of another joyous one," Ausley noted in her weekly report to friends. So never let it be said that something good didn't come from this year's legislative session. Indeed, Will may be the most important thing any legislator produced this year.
