Chapter 8: The Next Day

The next day my only thought was getting to Nate. I couldn’t leave him all alone over at another hospital. He needed his mother if he was going to get through this. I could not abandon him. When I told the nurse I was going she initially just laughed and said “I’d like to see you try.” Still, I insisted and forced her to help me get up out of bed. I was still hooked up to IV morphine, saline drips, IV antibiotics, and a had a foley catheter in place. Very slowly we got my legs to the side of the bed and she ran the controls until the bed had me sitting up. I put my feet on the floor and holding the nurse’s hand, attempted to stand. I couldn’t do it! I doubled over and cried in pain. The nurse simply said, “see?” But she looked into my anguished face all covered in tears and had to agree that the next time would be easier. She came back with a wheel chair a little while later, helped me dress, took most of the tubes out of my body, and gave me a “pass” to leave the hospital.

In the meantime I had spoken with Nathan’s doctors over at Cardinal Glennon. It didn’t look good. His pediatrician was honest and up front with me, but the resident could only keep repeating how sorry he was. I immediately demanded the resident not be allowed anywhere near my son again. As sick as he was, the last thing he needed was someone else’s negative energy around him. Jeff arrived and we left.

Now let me tell you something about moving about too soon after surgery. People tend to think that C-sections are routine and a piece of cake. I’m here to say that they are major surgery. The pain. Oh God, the pain! Getting into and out of the wheel chair is hard enough and takes at least 5 minutes in that state. Every single crack and small bump on the road is like another knife going into your belly. But I couldn’t stop to think about that. All I could think about was my son.

Jeff and the kids had been to see Nathan the day before, so Jeff knew just where to go. Sitting there next to his bed in the NICU was horrifying and sad. He was the biggest baby there. But was also the sickest. He couldn’t maintain temperature, pH levels, or his blood pressure. He couldn’t urinate at all. The drugs weren’t keeping him stable and he was on a ventilator. They’d done EEGs the day before and that morning before we arrived and found nothing. Nothing at all. No brain waves. One of the nurses had made a fancy little nameplate for his bed out of Mickey Mouse shaped construction paper. I got to hold him for a little while in a chair next to his bed. How he changed the moment they put him into my arms! He seemed to relax. We looked at each other and I could see how hard it was for him. I tried to smile through my tears. But I ended up telling him only that I loved him and that it was alright to go if he had to. I wanted to sit there all day with him in my arms, but the truth of the matter was that I was too weak and feverish and in too much pain to hold him more than a few minutes.

The NICU staff seemed to think that his kidney function was the most pressing issue so they called in specialists who arrived while we were there. They confirmed that Nathan was too sick to stand a kidney transplant. They were very somber and stated that it was their experience that his kidney function would likely improve if the rest of him did. Nobody was holding out much hope for our son. He had been dead too long before they got him out. His organs had already begun to shut down. Still, I held onto a sliver of hope. That’s all we had. We had nothing else. We had to take one moment at a time and just hang on. I just couldn’t fathom my child dying. That’s just not something a parent can do. Yes, I was realistic. He was very, very sick. He could die. We were waiting for a miracle.