The Scariest Moments

On the sixth of August, 2003 Kyle Alexander was born. With his mop of brown hair and enormous blue eyes he came very quickly into the world and he instantly stole my heart. Unfortunately, because of the many medical conditions that he has had to battle, he has also spent the last few years, in and out of the hospital, trying to stop it as well! Scary moments have become quite routine in our household. They began with Kyle needing surgery on his airway just hours after his birth and have led to many late night ambulance and air care runs since then. They became so numerous at one point that I nearly lost count. Each has been its own little slice of hell as a mother, but there is one incident, one that I may never really recover from, that stands out as the scariest moment in all of my life.

It was a gorgeous Tuesday morning when my son was only about 2 years old. He had been hospitalized at the time for several weeks and he slept, sedated in his home away from home, as the doctors prepared to allow him to wake up. They were going to remove his breathing tube, the one he had been hooked to for 11 days, which had once again helped him to pull through. Sometimes when he caught even the most common of colds, Kyle's little body couldn't fight it and he would simply forget to breath. Like a miracle, this overwhelming octopus of a machine and the people at Children's Hospital trained to use it would step just at these moments like angels and breathe for him until he was able to do so once more on his own. Over and over, they have saved his life. The ventilator is, to me, a horrifying and at the same time beautiful piece of medical technology. Horrifying, that anyone should ever need to make use of it, but beautiful because of what it does, and the fact that when someone does need it, it is there.

On this particularly sunny day, I was elated. My baby was coming off the vent and I reveled happiness and excitement while taking my oldest son to school. The doctors had given me an estimated time that they planned to take the tube out, so I returned with giddy anticipation to the ICU. After almost two weeks of watching him squirm in a morphine induced sleep, today was finally The Day! I was going to see Kyle open his eyes again, and maybe even hear him say "Mommy". Coming off that ventilator meant that his surgeries had gone well and that he was taking another huge step towards his planned recovery.

I slipped quietly into his hospital room to see Kyle, out of his crib, being rocked gently in a chair, held by a young, male doctor. The fact that he was held by a doctor, not a nurse or volunteer, and the significance of that, would be lost on me until later. A lot of other hospital staff had also gathered in room B16, likely in response to cues about what was coming next, but I never even saw them. I only had eyes for my boy. With a tremendous grin, I turned to wash my hands with antiseptic soap as I commented on how great he looked, freed from all of the tubing and tape. Through the beeping and shuffling going on around me, my thoughts were firmly centered on taking the doctors place and holding my son in that chair. I turned away from the sink, expecting to see happy faces and beaming smiles. Instead I witnessed the beginning, middle and end of any parents absolute worst nightmare.

The monitor directly above Kyle's head was lit up and screaming. The room suddenly erupted into what can only be called professionally coordinated chaos. Doctors jumped to attention and nurses scrambled for needed supplies as my sons heart rate fell like a wounded bird. 108...71...44bpm. These are the plummeting numbers that I vividly remember. My eyes began to have real trouble sending these messages to my staggered brain as they continued to fall lower, into the 30's, and then into the 20's, the teens, and then....NOTHING! My mind felt frozen as the flat lined monitor wailed, and I could not even begin to move. My baby had quit breathing and his little heart had ceased beating at all!

Everyone has heard of the expression "paralyzed by fear", but the actual experience is something that, as I recall it, still makes me sweaty and numb. As I watched in horror, my child died. The doctors fought a ferocious fight to bring Kyle back to me as my entire body shuddered and then absolutely betrayed me. I was trapped in rigid shock, suspended disbelief and the starkest form of fear, the fear for your child's life. It was not an abstract worry or an every parent sort of fear, but one that was imminent, in the room with me, and raw. I watched helplessly as orders were shouted and packages were ripped open as everyone in the room focused intently on reviving my failing son. There are no words which can accurately describe my abject terror. I was at once struck blind, deaf and dumb. In the commotion, everyone forgot about my diminished presence as they worked desperately on Kyle. I stood paralyzed against the wall as electric paddles came flying from their cart and a doctor reached out to plunge an atropine filled syringe straight into my little boys heart! At this unimaginable sight some form of sound must have escaped from my locked throat because the next thing I heard as my vision swam before me was a woman who cried out "Oh my God!" and then "I think that she's his Mom!".

In those prolonged moments which still seem like hours in my mind, the doctors and staff at Cincinnati Children's Hospital performed a miracle. Kyle's heart jumped to pick up it's lost beat, and he danced his way to recovering. Two weeks after his "death" I was able to bring Kyle home. He is happy, and healthy, and he is now 4 years old. He is precocious and precious and most important of all, he is ALIVE! As his mother I will never be able to forget the day when, for just a few moments, he was not. The fear from that moment has left a real guiding residue upon my life. I appreciate much more, and I find myself needing a lot less because I realize that I, and my family are truly blessed.