It’s taken me a long time to sit down and write about this. I think I’m making myself do this because it is getting close to his 1st birthday.
After we landed in Houston at a hospital, the name of which I will keep out of this, we got into a ambulance and rode over to the entrance of the hospital.
*Side bar, almost a year later and I’m writing this and my hands are shaking and my heart is racing, some things you just can’t get past.*
They took him away from me while they brought him to the room and got him situated. I was waiting on Tj too cause he had to drive in. I needed him with me so bad. That was our baby that was fighting for his life, no one was feeling what I was feeling but him. I was so worried about how he was able to drive and function in Houston with all this going on. I didn’t breathe until I saw Tj again, but that breath felt so incomplete because if I relaxed, what would that say about me as a Momma. I never allowed myself to feel okay. Even for a moment.
The doctor came out into the waiting room to talk to me about everything that had happened and his history. (We delt with 3 intinsivist during this stay) I told her everything and I also did make it known then and there I was an ICU nurse and that basically you can not give me the run around.
When we finally got to see him again I felt like I was walking into a dream. Our little boy was hooked to the ventilator and all the bells and whistles that go with it, the monitors and iv’s. When you have a family member come in and see their loved one hooked up to machines like that for the first time it’s the nurses job to help them through it. Not only did this nurse not do this, she didn’t even tell me her name. I actually had to ask her what medication she was giving my child. My first impression of this hospital was awful and I told Tj straight up if it didn’t get better we were leaving and going to TCH.
That night Wyatt started to do worse. While on the ventilator, there is a certain volume that it has set for your lung to fill up with and Wyatt started to not get his. So they had to take out the current tube and place another one that had what is called a cuff that could help him get his correct volume. They also placed a central line that they could draw blood from.
Unfortunately, Wyatt had his first episode that night. Somehow, he was going apneic on the ventilator. We were sitting in his room in the middle of the night and his oxygen SATs dropped out of nowhere and his heart rate dropped drastically. Babies heart rates his age don’t need to be under 100. It was 50 and dropping. The nurses ran in and disconnected him from the ventilator and bagged him. That’s basically forcing air into his lungs through the tube with a bag for emergencies.
That night I lost track of how many times he was bagged and how many times they did CPR. Through the next two weeks Wyatt would randomly drop his oxygen SATs and his heart rate. Sometimes, he had good nights because the night nurses were fantastic. Take one if his night nurses Melanie, she was fantastic. She was in his room constantly making sure his airway was clear and patent and he rarely had to be bagged when she worked.
Unfortunately, most of his day shift was awful and is the fuel to my nightmares. MULTIPLE times Tj had to run out in the hallway and yell for help because Wyatt’s oxygen levels were in the 50’s. By the time they would make it in the room it would be in the 30’s and by the time they would get it to stop dropping we saw numbers as low as 11 and 13 with a heart rate in the 30’s. I had to take things into my own hands for the sake of my son and I bagged him, I worked on the vent, and I did CPR.
This is something NO parent should ever have to do on their child. As I’m typing this I can physically feel my son’s heart beat start under my fingers. I will always remember the very real conversations that I had where I was not sure if he was going to make it. I just could not shut down my nurse brain. Every time he would have to be bagged/resuscitated I would think is this it? Is this the moment I lose my baby ? There were days I didn’t sleep, eat or drink until someone reminded me that I had to keep up with normal human functions because at that point, I wasn’t a human. I was a Momma scared that every second was his last.
Tj was not handling this well at all. Honestly, he wasn’t even handling it .he spent alot of time on his phone playing games, but I knew that was how he was coping. At one point when it didn’t look like he was going to to pull through he asked me if it was as bad as he thought. I didn’t want to make him verbalize what he was thinking, so I said yes, It is we might loose him. Just saying those words made my brain go into a fog and bring nurse me out, so the Momma part didn’t have to deal.
This hospital has some major issues with staff and I was very adamant multiple times about getting him transfered to Texas Children’s, but insurance kept denying it. We spent 31 days there, 17 days of him intubated, and never once did they investigate WHY any of this was going on.
They checked the flu and RSV panels 3 times and each time was negative. But CONSISTENTLY called him and RSV baby. I had to pull a holy terror of a momma bear fit for them to even get a pulmonologist in his room. During this time we were thinking okay, maybe he has tracheomalacia (a malformation of the trachea) or maybe it’s cardiac. I had to BEG them to do an echo and they would never even discuss the results with me.
During this time the doctors did start to use the term “if” he makes it through this. My point of bringing this up is that I knew that once he was extubated, our battle was not over. My baby had something wrong, and noone could tell me what it was.
Through all of this I prayed every second of every day. I asked God so many times to not take my baby away from me I knew there was no physical way I could make it through that, I was barely making it then. But I was so so angry with God! How dare he do this to an innocent baby?!? What could my child have done to deserve that! I yelled and screamed and cried so much in the shower I lost my mind. I would sit on the floor of the shower with my eyes closed and beg that when I opened them this would all be a dream. But when I opened I would still be living in my nightmare.