On March 12, 2013, our then-13-month-old daughter, who is called Rosebud on the blog, was injured in an accident in our home. This is Part 5 of the series in which I relate the story of the injury, our subsequent 4-week hospital stay, and the ongoing recovery process. This story is very difficult to write and relive. If you choose to comment, please be kind. I promise you that there is no judgment or condemnation or blame that you can place on me that I haven't already placed on myself. The index to the whole series can be found by clicking this link.
Due to the emotional difficulty, I never did get everything written down in journal format at the time. I carried a journal with me through our entire hospital stay, but somehow I just couldn't bring myself to open it. I do regret that, in some ways. Parts 1-4 of this series, which were (mostly) written shortly after the events, are presented in a present-tense format. The rest of the series will be composed of (1) my facebook status updates and comments from the time of the events, and (2) my current commentary for filling in details, emotions, etc.
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Day 2: March 13, 2013
Posted in group, 11:14 am: "[Things are] not great. She's one of the sickest in the PICU here. We are still cautiously optimistic and they are taking good care of her. Continued prayers appreciated!"
What I didn't say:
I didn't say that Stephanie, our nurse, spent the night with her portable computer pulled up in the doorway of Rosebud's PICU room. She had no other patients assigned to her that night. Rosebud needed her entire focus. I was also told that, if a room became available, Rosebud would be moved closer to the nurses' station (she was in the corner room), so more nurses would be more readily available if needed.
I didn't say that Rosebud spent the night immediately following The Incident in a crib...for the first time in her life. She seemed dazed and confused and "out of it" much of the time. They had her on oxygen assistance, but I could tell she still struggled to breathe. Occasionally she would "snap awake," for lack of a better phrase, because she wasn't really sleeping. When this happened, she thrashed around looking for me. I could tell she definitely recognized me. The nurse commented on it, too. She kept trying to move her body to get into my arms, but her movements were uncoordinated. I spent the night in a chair beside her crib, stroking her little arms, patting her tummy, kissing her fingers, trying desperately to communicate my love and sorrow...and hope. I didn't sleep.
I didn't say that I tried to hold her a few times, but she got too agitated when I did. I didn't say that we made the decision that I wouldn't hold her until she was more stable. I didn't say that this broke my heart.
I didn't say that her neurological state seemed to improve over night, but that I watched her breathing become more and more labored.
I didn't say that I had to leave the room in the morning, right around shift change (new nurse: Virginie), so that they could do a chest x-ray. I didn't say that I collapsed in the hallway just outside her room, by the nurses' station, and sobbed. The other Stephanie, the one who brought me water when we arrived, came and put her arms around me and cried with me. After a moment, while they were still working on Rosebud, I left to tell Husband what was going on, to ask him to come to her room with me.
I didn't say what went through my mind a few minutes later when I tried to go back in, and they wouldn't let me into the PICU. Instead, the chaplain was there, and he's the one that told me...
I didn't say how it felt when he told me that she had needed to be sedated and intubated (a tube down her throat to her lungs, and a ventilator breathing for her) to allow her body to rest and heal. I ran to Husband, sure that our girl was dying and we wouldn't even get to see her until after she was gone. I didn't want it to end like this! Everything was just so surreal. The chaplain was wonderful. He explained things to us and prayed with us and helped us talk through it.
I didn't say that I couldn't take it anymore and took off running down the hallway, just in my socks. I didn't say that we walked laps up and down that hallway, talking, praying, crying, until they let us back in to see her.
I didn't say that she had another CT scan that morning, and that it showed that the bleeding on her brain was resolving, slowly. I didn't say that I was scared to hope that this was a positive sign.
I didn't say what it is like to be sure that your baby isn't going to live, and to have to make peace with that potentiality.
I didn't say that I knew -- I KNEW -- that it was going to be okay, somehow, no matter what happened.
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Husband and I dealt with this crisis in two very different ways. I had to be with her at almost all times. It was agony to be away, but sometimes I had to take a moment of distance so I wouldn't scream. Husband, conversely, could only be with her for a few moments at a time. He needed to be near -- in the waiting room, usually -- but he couldn't stand to see her that way. His feelings of responsibility for her condition were so strong.
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By the end of the day on Wednesday, my mom and Husband's parents had arrived to help support us, along with Husband's brother's family. My dad was still there, too. We made the decision that my parents would take Jeric home with them for a few days. My in-laws planned to both stay that night, if I remember correctly, and then my father-in-law would head off on a business trip while my mother-in-law stayed a few more days. Kevin and Joni decided they'd stay the night at a hotel, and that Joni's mom would come pick the kids up on Thursday for a few days so they could be at the hospital with us.
My father-in-law had called Kevin after lunch on Wednesday and told him what had happened. He immediately went home and they packed up and drove the 3.5 hours to the hospital. Joni had been in the middle of starting dinner prep and had onions cooking on the stove. She turned the stove off, but in her haste decided to just worry about the onions when she got back. The next week after returning home, she sent me this picture of the dried-up onions (I include it here for comic relief):
Other visitors in the first day or so included my aunt, my cousin, and two of his daughters. My cousin's family lived in a neighboring town, and my aunt had been down visiting. We also had a couple of Husband's coworkers stop by with a care package and snacks, and an envelope with a collection they had taken up at work. Words cannot express my gratitude for the goodness of others in our time of difficulty.
One of the hospital's social workers came to see us and let us know that there was a home nearby for families of hospital patients -- like a Ronald McDonald House, but locally owned and operated. Husband called right away and got us on the waiting list for that night. When they called later and let us know they had room for us, Husband and his dad headed over to get us checked in. Meanwhile, my parents took Jeric to Walmart to get him some clothes (because he was still in the same pajamas from the night before, and no shoes). They also brought a few essentials for me and Husband because we were going to be at the hospital for the long haul: a couple of t-shirts to change into, extra socks, towels, toothbrushes and toothpaste, deodorant...
In the afternoon we went to the Family House and showered and tried to nap for a little while (I couldn't), then back to her side. My in-laws slept at the Family House that night. I wasn't leaving my baby, and Husband wasn't willing to leave the hospital without me.
I thought my heart would break when Jeric left with my parents.
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At some point on Wednesday, we were visited in PICU by a trauma specialist / pediatrician, Dr. ME. She took Husband and I, separately, into another room and took our statements and exhaustive medical history. She was also a young mom, and very kind. It was helpful to talk through what had happened in order to begin to process it all. At first, I thought she was someone from CPS and that she was going to take my children away from me, that she was going to decide that I was a neglectful, unfit mother and that it was all my fault. But she shared with me that she wasn't perfect, either, and that there would doubtless things in her house that would pose a hazard to her 9-month-old son, who was just beginning to be mobile (she is not the only doctor in that hospital who worked with our Rosebud who came to me at some point and said that they had gone home and checked all their furniture and bolted everything to the walls). She told me that she was very interesting in studying things like, "Well, if we have this much force from such-an-angle/height, and the person is so tall and so heavy, what kinds of trauma does that cause? What kind of force does is take to cause X injury?" (To learn these things about Rosebud's accident, she sent some people--detectives, actually--to our house the next day to weigh/measure the tv and dresser that fell, and also filed a consumer hazard report on the tv. Kevin and Joni were at our home when they came.) Dr. ME came and checked on us several times after that, while we were in the PICU.
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Sometime in the morning they brought me a breast pump and the bottles and tubes and everything to use with it. When I first sat down to pump, it had been about twelve hours since Rosebud had last eaten. I pumped 18 ounces. After that, I spent a significant portion of every day with my pump. No one could believe that my baby was 13 months old, and I was still getting around 30 ounces a day. It went into the freezer for future use. I also sent Husband to get me some supplements to help me keep my supply up. I had high hopes of re-establishing breastfeeding once Rosebud was stable enough.
I don't remember eating much, if anything, all day.
I still didn't sleep.
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