We have
had a rough summer. Since July 1st, the day we switched to a crappier health
insurance, we have been to the ER three times.
The first
time was on the 4th of July. Lani was wheezing, sometimes struggling to catch
his breath. They gave him a nebulizer and a steroid shot to open his airways
and diagnosed him with croup.
***
The
second time was August 1st. I had driven to a pharmacy on 7th Ave to pick up a
prescription for Lani and ended up buying a bunch of other stuff. I put Ro in
the car, then loaded the stuff. Ro climbed into the front seat. I opened the
back door, to put Lani in. And there was this moment, where I felt this sort of
resistance, like why wasn't the door opening all the way? And I just pushed on
through it, because that's the kind of day I was having, life kept throwing
these stupid little obstacles at me and I was batting them aside. I heard a
soft pop. Then Roan started screaming.
One look
at his thumb and I knew it was bad. I knew we were going to the ER. It was cut
open in a messy jagged way, and there was so much blood. I carried Ro to
his car seat and started buckling him in. But he was bleeding so much that I
started worrying about blood loss, and calculating how long it would take me to
drive to the hospital (2 minutes) how long it would take to find parking (10
minutes) and realizing that it wouldn't work, I couldn't parallel park a car
while my son suffered like this. I looked at him and wondered if he was going
into shock. The cut was through the pad of his thumb and it flapped open and
the blood wouldn't stop coming.
I picked
him up and held him on my hip. Lani was strapped to me in a front carrier. I
got on the sidewalk and reviewed what I knew about how to stop bleeding. I knew
I should wrap it in something, but the inside of Roan's thumb was so thoroughly
exposed and for some reason I was scared to press a cloth to it, scared of it
sticking to the inner workings of his thumb and what would happened when we
took it off. I knew I should elevate it, so I raised his thumb above all our
heads, so that we were all spoted in blood. Poor Ilan had blood smeared on his
little baby head.
I decided
to jog to the hospital, because it was the fastest way to get there without
letting go of my son. Must lock the car, I thought, but I couldn't find the car
keys. I realized that our parking ticket would expire in 15 minutes and we
would get a ticket. I berated myself for thinking about a parking ticket at a
time like this. I realized I didn't have extra diapers or a bottle for Lani. I
needed to call Jay. I was momentarily paralyzed by all the small stupid things
that needed to happen before I could start my sprint to the ER.
In that
moment a man asked if I needed help. He was parked right behind me and offered us a ride to the hospital. All the blood was attracting attention. A woman with twins stopped and
offered me a bandaid. I think I laughed. The helpful man said, "This is
beyond a bandaid." but the woman kept digging through her enormous diaper
bag, determined to help.
I was
terrified that Roan would lose his thumb, but when they x-rayed it it wasn't
even broken. It took 12 stitches to close it. They gave Roan a sedative and
numbed his thumb but even so I had to lay on top of him to keep him still
enough for the doctor to do his work. The whole time we were there he cried for
me to take him home, yelled that his thumb was fine, to just leave the thumb
alone. I hate hospitals and I hated being his jailer, hated the sound of my
voice saying we had to stay here, that this was the best thing for him. I wanted to grab him and run back
through time to a place where I paid closer attention, stopped opening the door
when I felt that resistance, remembered all the times I've told him to get his
fingers out of that hinge, got home in time to make dinner.
Once we
were settled in the ER I called Jay and he got there an hour later. I was
worried that as soon as I saw him I'd collapse, knowing he was there to take
over. But I didn't collapse and Jay did something I'll always appreciate: he
gave me a big hug and told me I'd done everything right. That I'd handled
everything perfectly. That it wasn't my fault.
In the
days following the thumb incident I had trouble sleeping. I had trouble
concentrating. I couldn't stop replaying it in my head, imagining over and over
again how it must have felt. I must have spent hours staring at my own
thumb, imagining the pressure and the little pop and the broken bruised skin.
Jay kept saying it wasn't my fault but I knew that it was.
***
Our third
trip: Lani fell off our bed and fractured his skull. It was September 2nd, the
morning of our 5th wedding anniversary. Lani woke up early, Jay sent me
downstairs to get some extra sleep on the couch. Some time later I heard a thud
followed by Ilan screaming. I ran upstairs. I knew it was bad when I felt the
dent in the side of his head. Jay was already throwing a bag together.
Ro was
still asleep when I carried him out to the car. The drive took less than 10
minutes, and the whole time I was imagining what was going on inside Ilan's
head. Was blood pooling in his brain? Was he losing functions as each second
ticked by? He was calm now, looking out the window, giddy about a car ride in
my lap instead of his carseat. He seemed fine, but what small secret things
were happening inside him, where nobody could see?
They did
an x-ray and confirmed the fracture. Could I get him to fall asleep for the CT
scan? It was his nap time and I rocked him to sleep in the ER. I carried him to
the exam room. I had to lay him down with his head in this u-shaped
cradle just so. This was by far the most high stakes nap transfer I'd ever
made. If he woke up, we'd have to sedate him. If he woke up mid CT scan it was
even worse, he'd have to be sedated and the procedure redone, so he'd receive
twice the amount of radiation. Jay has always been better at putting our kids
to sleep, but he was on a walk with Ro. Miraculously, I laid Lani down
and he didn't stir. Until the the tech started Velcro-strapping his body in
place. I used an insane amount of shushing (so much that it made me dizzy) to get him back to sleep. And then the tech
turned the machine on. It made a loud whirring noise and a thin red beam
striped across Lani's eyelids. Nap over.
When we
finally got the CT scan (with the help of sedation) it revealed no bleeding in
the brain. That was good news, though there could be a slow bleed that wasn't
showing up yet. It seemed like we were out of the woods in terms of brain
damage and were dealing with a cosmetic issue. A neurosurgeon came by to
discuss our options. 1) a common surgical procedure where they drill a small
hole right next to the dent and pop it out, 2) do nothing, or 3) a
less-invasive procedure that the surgeon had only done once before, where he
uses the same device they use in Labor and Delivery to vacuum extract babies,
to suck the skull back into place. I could tell by his rhetoric that the
surgeon was angling for option 3. He gave us lots of details. But we had to act
fast, this procedure wouldn't work in a few hours. It may even be too late now,
he told us ruefully.
When we
seemed wary he gave us the hard sell - he was going off duty in 20 minutes, and
he wouldn't come back to do this. 20 minutes, make your choice. We chose to do
nothing.
Ilan was
admitted into the hospital for 24 hours of observation. He had a hep lock in
his hand and a board taped to his palm to hold it in place. He *hated* that
board, which totally immobilized his hand. He spent half his waking hours
beating the crap out of us with that board, smacking us repeatedly in the face.
We didn't stop him. We felt like we deserved it.
There
wasn't much to do in the hospital. Ilan couldn't crawl with the heplock, was
hooked up to machines half the time, and I wouldn't let him play with any of
the toys in the playroom for fear he'd catch something he hadn't been
vaccinated against. After an uneventful observation period they let us go
home. The best indicator of any neurological damage is behavior, so if he
started acting strangely we were told to come right back. This led to a lot of
hand wringing over the next week. I remember Jay saying, "he's sticking
his tongue out a lot. Did he do that before?" and we were both plunged
into a period of intense worry and self-doubt. What if he was sticking his
tongue out more? What did it mean?!
When I
really want to torture myself I imagine how it must have happened. Ilan has
been trying to crawl off our bed for months. He was going for the iPod that we
keep on the dresser, which plays his favorite song, P!nk's "Raise Your Glass." I
imagine his face just before he fell, serious with intent, excited at having
made it so far without being stopped, one arm outstretched, then how his
balance must have shifted, his body pulled forward by the weight of his head.
He fell on his right side because the iPod was to the left of him and his head
was turned toward it. Did he keep looking at it as he fell? Did he even realize
he was falling?
We are so
relieved that he seems to be okay. Now we face a difficult decision. Do we fix the dent in his head, or leave it be? My
gut reaction is to leave it alone, because any surgery for a 9 month old baby
is scary. But that feels selfish. Are we trading our anxiety over the surgery
for years of Ilan's anxiety over his mis-shapen head? Or is the risk of surgery
for a cosmetic procedure too high to justify? The hardest part of this decision
is that we don't know what kind of kid Ilan is going to be. If it were Roan it
would be easier, we have a handle on who he is. But Ilan is just starting to
reveal himself.
I don't tend to believe that things happen for a reason, and I'm pretty
clueless in the face of subtle hints. Even so, after 3
ER trips I begin to suspect that the universe is trying to tell me something. Maybe a reminder not to take good health for
granted, and of how fragile life really is. Or maybe a reminder of what it means to be responsible for these children's lives. And how to find peace when we hurt them.
