Hello everyone
Well, our dear Jessica gave us a bit of a scare on Memorial day. Gene and I were all set to spend some time together while my mom watched her. My mom was due to come visit at 2PM. As we were getting things ready, the baby started getting more pale and sweaty and cold. She hadn't been eatting well the few days prior. Gene brought her upstairs for me to look at her and to take her temperature. As we started undressing her, she threw up. I called the hospital advice line and they told me to bring her directly to the emergency room. My mom decided she would come to our house an hour early. As she pulled up, we were loading the car to go to the hospital. We all went and got her registered. They had us hold oxygen on her. I guess this was a bad thing to do in her condition. Gene and I were the only ones in the room with her when she stopped breathing. Her oxygen level was plummetting and the monitor was beeping. We looked at her and she was white. Gene put his head by her face and couldn't feel breaths. She quickly turned a grey color. As he pulled his head up, the doctor walked in to tell us something. Gene told him she wasn't breathing. The doctor immediately started CPR. She came through and we were able to see her again. Then a couple hours after the first episode, she did it again. We were asked to step into the next room. I guess she stopped breathing on them a few times so they decided to intubate her (a tube going down her throat to do her breathing for her). They had to sedate her for the procedure. About an hour later or so, a transport team showed up to bring her to UCSF Medical Center (San Francisco). They flew her by airplane to San Francisco. We drove and met her there.
They think they know the cause. I guess when a child is a month old, the blood count naturally dips down as they are transitioning from fetal hemoglobin to adult hemoglobin. In normal babies, this does nothing. I guess it was too much for Jessica's system to handle. She just wasn't able to carry enough oxygen in her inefficient circulatory system to feed the whole body. They are still trying to rule out other causes, but this is what we have heard so far. They plan to take the tube out today. Depending on how she does, she may come back home on maintenance medications or they may decide to do the open-heart surgery earlier than planned.
She looks very comfortable. They still have her sedated and on pain medications. I hope they will wake her up today. I miss her smiles and facial expressions...even when she glares at me (she furrows her brow and looks at me out of the corner of her eyes when she doesn't like something I've done to her). We are so relieved that she stopped breathing while in the hospital rather than at home. We took the infant CPR training course, but when the moment came we momentarily froze due to the shock. It may have been that we would have been able to do it and bring her back, but I don't think we would have had the confidence that the doctor had. We are thankful that it happened on a holiday so our whole family was available...otherwise I would have been home alone. We are thankful that she did it before 2PM when we planned to leave to enjoy a movie because my mother would be all by herself with no way to contact us. We are thankful for all of the medical staff that has taken care of her. We feel very comfortable with her here in the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit...the nurses and doctors are a wealth of knowledge. We are thankful for this place that I am staying in (it was built for families of sick children to stay in and is run entirely on donations). Since the time we found out she has a problem (21 weeks after she was conceived), we have seen God's hand. He has placed all of these people in our path. There are too many individual miracles to tell...I could go on for pages...which I plan to try to do while I am sitting at her bedside. All of creation is a miracle, but Jessica is a special miracle for us to share with others.
Please continue to pray for her. Thank you so much for your prayers so far. We have been so blessed.
Sara (SWEEtness) =) |
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