Top
Search Chandra's Blog
Blog Categories
Blog Tags
"Apparition" "Art of Spiritual Warfare" "Best in Show" "Body of a Girl" "Exposure" "Gone with the Wind" "Half a Life" "Husband and Wife" "Myth of You and Me" "Open Your Heart with Gardens" "Stiltsville" "Substitute Me" "Temptation by Water" "The Bird Sisters" "The Book Thief" "The Guardian Angel Diary" "The Heroine's Bookshelf" "The King's Speech" "The Language of Light" "The Love Goddess' Cooking School" "The Mobuis Striptease" "The Peach Keeper" "The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted" "The Wednesday Sitsters" "This House" "Unintended" 50th Book Club Prize Pack act 'as if' adoption advice Alpha Male Ann Hood Atlanta attachment parenting autism babies babywearing bad reviews Ben Bethany Hamilton Betty Smith Big Nate birthdays biting Blizzards blog tour blogging blogswap blurb body image book book clubs book tour Books and Books Boudreaux boys breastfeeding Bridget Asher brothers Buffalo News Caeli Widger California cancer caramel oat bars Caribbean Carol Shields Carolyn Haley cats Cayman Cayman Compass Ceausescu chameleon Charles Bukwosi Cherry Cheryl Chick Lit Plus childhood CHOP CHOSEN Christina Shideler Christmas Christmas cards chuffy Cinderella color Colorado comedy community connected contests cooking co-sleeping cow milking craft criticism Crown Publishers cry it out Dakota Darin Strauss David Lipsky dawn Dawn Chorus Daybreak 27 Destined to Fail Diane Lockward DOG BLOG Dog Whisperer dogs Dr. Anna Leahy Dr. Karen Monroy Dr. Oz Due Uve editing editor education Erin Blakemore evening walk expeditionary learning Exposure Facebook fake it til your make it Falcor family fan mail fans favorite books feminism Fon Wang Forrest Free stuff gardening geography gluten-free goats God Grand Family Grant Schnarr grey hoodie guest blog Gyllian Davis Harper HarperCollins Hayden HHarperCollins hockey home homeschooling homework Huffington Post divorce editor ice hockey Ilie Ruby inspiration International Women's Day iPhone 'It Takes a Village' Ivan Jungé J Jane Austen jasmine tea Jeffrey Eugenides Jenna Blum Jessica Keenan Smith Jessie Jonah Judy Blume Julianna Baggott Kelly Simmons Kid History kids Kristin Kimball Labrador Laos Leah Stewart least favorite word letting go Lincoln Pierce Linda Davis Linden Lisa Belkin Lisa McKay literary agent live in the now Lois Alter Mark Lori Odhner Lori Tharps Lost Boy love language love story Lucky jeans Maggie Nelson magic Maria Massie marriage Martha Beck Max Maya Ziv meat Meg Waite Clayton Melissa McNallan Melissa Senate memoir menagerie mentor Michelle McGee micro fiction mindfulness Miranda July modern living mojitos money MoxieMomma nachos NAIBA Newfoundland Newfoundlands Nichole Bernier NRA Nutella NYTimes NYTimes Motherlode Opening Heavens Doors orphanage paint Paleo Comfort Foods parenting patience persistence Perthes Disease Peter Pan Piper pizza poetry ponies Portland Psychology Today publishing puppy puppy breath puppydom Pushcart Prize Q&A quilts Quinn readers reading Rebecca Gyllenhaal Rebecca Rasmussen Remy review reviews revision ritual romance writer Romania running Sally Kim Samantha March Samoyed Sampson sangria secret confessions security senior project Sept 11 serendipity sexting SheKnows Book Club PIck of the Year SheWrites shopping short fiction SImon&Schuster sister sister-cousin sisters slings smells snow songs Sophie space exploration Spain sshort fiction Starbucks stuttering stylesubstancesoul.com sunset Susanna Daniels Swedenborg teens Thanksgiving the climbing tree The Four Ms. Bradwells" The Grain Exchange The Name Game Thelma Zirkelbach Therese Fowler THUMOS TIME magazine tingarita Tourettes tradition travel Twitter ugly dolls unschooling wedding white wine William Faulkner winter Wisconsin writing writing and parenthood YA Fiction Zulu
Friday
Sep102010

Part 1 of 2 Nine years ago today 9-10 

DateSeptember 10, 2010

At six days old, our newborn son Hayden went in for the first of a handful of procedures, an attempt to enable him to breathe and eat on his own so we could one day take him home from the hospital. But because of our son's unusual anatomy, at the pre-op broncoscopy, the scope went through the back of his esophagus, risking infection of his heart and lungs with stomach acid. 

 

 

I was in McDonald's having a milkshake when this happened. I'd been sitting in the waiting area with all the other parents whose kids were in surgery, and I'd heard the white-haired nurse inform a Jamaican couple that their daughter's open heart surgery had begun. 

 

"Ah, she be slice, then," the father nodded, matter of fact, while the mother knitted beside him and I'd thought to myself, open heart surgery! And they were so calm! How come my baby was going in for a tongue-lip adhesion, something comparatively small, and I couldn't sit still?

 

Things are going to be fine! I told myself, and decided I needed to go have a milkshake to calm down. 

The CHOP poster outside the hospital McDonalds said THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MINOR SURGERY WHEN IT IS YOUR CHILD.

So it was okay for me to worry, normal, but this was minor. They'd wheel him back to the NICU and we'd watch and see how his oxygen sats were, and maybe do a trial extubation later in the week. If this didn't work, there were two more big guns in our arsenal: a tracheotomy like ENT wanted, or jaw distraction, breaking his bones and inserting metal bars with medieval cranks to extend the lower half of his face over the next four months, plastic surgery's first choice.

We'd chosen the least invasive route, willing to try and see how it went, save the big guns for later. 

When I came back to the surgery floor, Jon was pacing; they had been looking for me. Doctors took us into a small closet, away from the other parents, with a chair, and a plastic couch, and two fake plants, and a painting of the ocean under flickery flourescent lights. 

 

There were a lot of apologies and backtracking. We wanted to see him, but he wasn't out of surgery. Obviously they'd aborted the other procedure. I was still walking everywhere with a pillow over my stomach, only six days post C-section, and I wiped my tears on my pillow, which smelled like home.

 

They were very, very sorry, they said.

 

When we saw Hayden back in the NICU, he was in obvious, extreme pain, writhing and arching, unable to cry around his intubation.

 

One of the doctors came to his isolette and rattled off the list of antibiotics he was being put on, and I wished for pen and paper, but at the same time, knew that it didn't mean anything, that knowing their names, looking them up on the internet, wouldn't change anything, because he said it then: "Either he'll make it to the end of the week, or he won't." 

 

We drove home that evening under a sky that was gunmetal gray, heavy with humidity, on Broad Street with all the traffic lights, which I hate. That was the night J told me carefully, that he was concerned Hayden might not be ours to keep. 

 

It happened then: six days of ambivalence, of feeling guiltily disconnected from this poor little creature in the hospital was sandblasted off me by sheer terror. Finally, I wanted this baby to live, to grow up, to be mine.

 

(For PART TWO, click HERE)

 

Tags: , , , , | Categories:

PostPost a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.

My response is on my own website »
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):
Post:
 
Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Alert
Comment Moderation Enabled
Thank you for adding to the conversation! Your comment will appear once it has been cleared by a website editor.

Notify me of follow-up comments via email.