Saffron
Phyllis Catherine Usticke was born Aug 23 2001. She was 10
weeks premature and weighed 2 pounds 15 ounces. Saffy spent her first
six weeks in the hospital.
Six weeks after coming home, Saffy was diagnosed with diffuse vascular tumors of the liver. After failed attempts to treat her condition with steroids and chemotherapy, Saffy received a liver transplant in January 2002.
Please enjoy Saffy's web pages. She is our treasure and joy.
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Saffy's Birth - Saffy's birth, her progress in the hospital, and her homecoming. |
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Saffy's Liver Condition - Saffy's battle against hepatic infantile hemangioendothelioma and pediatric kaposiform angiosarcoma. |
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Saffy's Photo Gallery - View hundreds of pictures! |
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Also see Saffy's Growth. |
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Separated at birth or by 32 years?
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Jill as baby |
Saffy as baby and Jill as adult |
| See enlarged pictures side-by-side | |
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The Simpsons original animation cel. Click on the image to see a close up of Homer Simpson and daughter Lisa. |
| Hear Saffy exercise her lungs: |
 Saffy
Nov 2 2001 (51KB MP3) |
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Saffy
Jun 2 2002 (40KB MP3) |
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Julia Sawalha as Saffy in Absolutely Fabulous |
Saffy's full name is Saffron Phyllis Catherine Usticke.
We fell in love with the name Saffron as fans of the British television show Absolutely Fabulous. One of the lead characters is Saffron 'Saffy' Monsoon, played by Julia Sawalha. In the show, Edina Monsoon and her best friend Patsy drive Eddie's sensible, responsible teenage daughter, Saffy, up the wall with their constant drug abuse and outrageous selfishness.
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A treasure chest of saffron |
Vanilla, Saffron Imports has a nice web site at www.saffron.com with good information about the spice. We have ordered their Saffron product and look forward to making some dishes.
Saffron is mentioned in Song of Solomon 4:14. The Song of Solomon is a beautiful love poem and one of Alec's favorite parts of the Bible.
It's
nice to have a fairly unique name that didn't even make the list of
top 1000 names
for year 2000 births in the United States. The name Saffron seems to
be more popular in the United Kingdom. One famous Saffron is the
British actress Saffron Burrows.
Saffy's middle names are after Alec's mother, Phyllis Ruzzi, and Jill's mother, Catherine Gale.
Every child is a miracle...with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter...until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability--like turning air to gold--that is the crowning unlikelihood. A miracle.
After Alan Moore, Watchmen