Customer Reviews

Sunday, April 3, 2011

December 2007: Charlie Almost Died Tonight

Charlie is getting worse.  everything is getting worse.  i don't understand what is wrong with my son.  i just want to know what is wrong and what that means.  one nurse told me that he may have to be sent home on monitors or oxygen.  another even whispered the T-word...tracheostomy. 

ever since the baby at the front of the nursery died i have been starting to go a little out of my mind.  Charlie de-sats all the time.  his monitors are constantly going off, and they have had to airbag him more and more.  i used to be so strong.  i would stand there with him and try to calm him down.  i would try to talk to him calmly or i would say shhhhhhh over and over for 10 minutes.  i would be right there with him until his O2 came back up and he calmed back down.  that was then.  in the past couple days i have been freaking out and breaking down the second he starts to de-sat.  i've been leaving the room every time.  i just can't handle it.  i can't handle watching them airbag my son, staring at the monitors, wondering if this is it...if this is the end.  big C has seen this change in me and even said to me "what's going on with you?  you used to just stand here and take it?".  leave it to big C to put me in my place when i need it. 

tonight i thought it was the end.  all day Charlie's abdomen was getting more and more distended.  The nurse kept measuring it, and it kept growing.  I was panicking because that was one of the things i noticed right away about the baby that died....its abdomen was huge.  of course, now we're into a god damn weekend.  you better be ready to suffer in a hospital if it's a weekend or after 5:00.  here in this NICU, the attending physician doesn't work on the weekends, so unless you spontaneously combust, they aren't going to do a fucking thing for you....."oh, we don't really make care decisions when the attending isn't here".  well what about when someone is going to die?  do you act then you cowards?  so ever since this afternoon i have been begging them to do an xray of Charlie's belly to see why it keeps getting bigger.   they told me that it is probably just gas, but i still want confirmation on this.  the good thing is that i have the nurse on my side and she doesn't mind harassing the damn doctors.  they keep saying, okay, we'll come do an xray, but we just keep waiting and waiting.  and then Charlie throws another fit and starts to de-sat again.  at first i thought this was just the usual, but he just kept getting worse and worse.  his O2 kept falling.  his heart rate was dropping.  the nurse kicked it into high gear, whipped out his vent tube and started bagging him.  still dropping.  and then, his O2 went to 0.  the heart rate monitor cut out.  i thought Charlie died.  but then, just as fast as he had gone into the episode, he came out of it.  his O2 started coming back up...60...64...72...81...his heart rate returned to normal, and we all started to breathe again.  they did the xray pretty quickly after that.  after a while the doctor came back in and said, "yes, it is just gas".  thank god.  thank you. 

jay and i went to bed that night, and i don't know what he was thinking, but all i could think was that our son was still alive.  he was over in the NICU being taken care of, and we would get up tomorrow morning and start the routine all over again.  Charlie was still alive. 

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