Sitting bedside, while your child struggles to survive, is just about the most horrific setting I could have ever imagined. I've never experienced the true fight for life until January 7th, 2022. Archer had coded once before for 2 minutes. He had spontaneous resuscitation and return of circulation on his own when this occurred, but this was nothing near to what we went through this time around. I left the interventional radiology room after they took him for his routine procedure. At the time, I was exciting. He had slept the entire night and slept right into the procedure room. No alligator tears when they took him away from me for either of us. I thought this was a win. Basically, stunned in happiness. This was supposed to be the beginning of our way home. A family reunion, everyone safely tucked in under one roof. I missed my family so much and they missed us.
After they took my son, I went to the cafeteria, grabbed a sandwich, ate 1/4 of it before it hit the trash. Hospital food has never been appealing. I sat in his hospital room, updated his caring bridge with my eagerness and excited wishes to return home the next day. As I sat, a rounding physician entered the room with the chaplain. My heart stopped. It didn't drop or flutter. It stopped. I was already sitting down. The physician in front of me and the chaplain to my right told me my son coded during anesthesia induction. I asked immediately if he was stable or on ECMO. He replied with a T word that I cannot remember to this day. He repeated that T word after I pleaded for more information. I picked up the phone, called Brandt. The emotional shock submerged me in dread. I kept telling myself what I've been told before by a critical cardiac nurse from our former stay in the cardiac ICU, "Katie, we don't lose kids here, we have ECMO." ECMO was my lifeline at this point. If I can just hold on to that word, I can hold on to my son. I immediately asked to be with him. I begged for them to take me to him. We started walking down the hallway, the same hallway Archer and I had just walked down 12 hours earlier to play Minecraft in the toy room. The doctor was walking slow. I was trying to make him go faster but he just didn't seem to catch my drift.
We get to the IR department after what felt like an hour, and I see a staggering amount of people outside a room, all dressed in surgical garments, and the doors to my lifeless son open. Wide-open. They turned a normal IR room into a surgical ward. They bring me across the hall, knowing damn well I have to be close and sit with me. I needed to be there because I wasn't going to wait around for phone calls to update me. The chaplain prayed while I wept, I had the doctors waiting with me call my family because my breath was absent and my words were nonexistent. Silently I prayed and begged the Lord to help my son. Please lord just be with him. Don't let him be scared or in pain, just be with him. I heard the tools they were using. This told me the sternotomy was done and the ECMO would be on soon.
A nurse came out of his surgical room and asked me if I wanted his pants. Camouflage fleece pants from Walmart. He loved them the most because they were soft. She placed them, rolled up, in my hands, I went to hug them close only to realize my son's favorite pants were soiled with his blood and my hands now had traces of my son's blood. I protested that this cannot be happening. This cannot be the case! It is a routine procedure he has been through before, Lord why is this happening? A doctor got a bag for me to place the pants in. More to come in later posts of what happened to these pants. Once the ECMO was placed and he was intubated, the anesthesiologist came to me and informed me that he will be transferred upstairs to the CVICU shortly. During this time another nurse had walked through the hallway spouting something she was ticked off about. She later came back to me and apologized. Funny the things that stick in your memory even though you could truly care less.
I walked behind the team consisting of 12 people and crammed into their elevator. We were heading to the place I had vowed never return, but again, I hung on to the statement, "We don't lose kids here, we have ECMO." This settled deep inside my soul and I knew the Lord was with me, but more importantly, he was with my son. I felt it. Little did I know, ECMO had less promising outcomes than I had initially been aware of. I can't tell you the room number because I never cared to look. I knew, at that time, that small room with 3 walls and glass doors was going to be my home for at least the next week. We weren't going to all be under the same roof tomorrow like I was so certain of. Nothing is certain. Life is not certain, no guarantees or promises. Life is precious and under deserved by many. Myself included. Until now.
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