What's Wrong With Cade?

I have never explained very well on the blog Cade's diagnosis. I always just say he has a chromosome 6p deletion and people just nod their heads and pretend to know what I'm talking about and I'm OK with that because it's confusing. This may be boring for you if you have ever had a genetics class but I'm going to attempt to explain Cade to those of you that remain confused.
There are 46 chromosomes that make up the DNA of a human and they are divided into 23 pairs. The pairs come from inheriting one from your mom and one from your dad. There are many things that can go wrong with replication as your cells divide as you are being made. There can be deletions, duplications, inversions, translocations and the list goes on and on. In Downs Syndrome there is a duplication, or trisomy, of the 21st chromosome. In Cade's case, when his little cells were dividing, a little piece was left out, or deleted, off his 6th chromosome. Because Shane and I have no evidence of this deletion, it was just a freak occurrence, or de novo, we are no more likely than the average person to have a child like this again. Below is a karotype of the normal human male. I have checked the 6th chromosome.
As you can see based on size, the higher the number, the less genes it represents. It's unfortunate for Cade that the 6th chromosome is so large and it represents about 6% of total DNA. That means it controls many things that affect the body. Each piece of the chromosome can be broken down and we can know what parts of the body it controls down to the tiniest detail. Each chromosome has 2 arms, known as P and Q. P arm is the short arm. It was detected on Cade's karotype to be missing a small but important piece on the P arm. All this means to us is that we have a little boy that you can think of as a book. You can think of each chromosome as a chapter of the book. Cade is missing some pages from the 6th chapter. You get the general idea of the story, but some parts don't make sense.
This deletion has affected Cade's development, mentally and physically, his muscle tone, the basic formation of his mouth, teeth, and chin, his heart, and possibly his vision and hearing. There are so few documented cases of this and there are so many variations it is impossible to compare. Today Cade's new geneticist took another blood test on Cade to determine his "break point" and the exact areas that are missing. In the meantime, we will continue to do what we are doing, get all the help he needs, and love on him everyday!