Curveball

Thursday night as we drove home from the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford I thanked God for good doctors and nurses, the cancellation of our trip to South Korea, and mostly for my wonderful fat happy son. The drive home from our twenty four hour hospital stay felt like some strange limbo between our normal lives and this scary alternate universe we had somehow ended up in.

It all started as a normal night at casa de Smoochy. I was quietly nursing Normy when he started sputtering and choking on his boobie milk. I sat him right up and patted his back as he threw himself into a monster coughing and crying fit. By the time his daddy got home a half hour later he was still upset. He was fussing and whimpering and just would not settle down. Dad went to change his diaper to rule that out as the cause of distress and from the other room I heard Smoochy call out, “I’ve found it.”

I went into the bedroom to find Normy had a giant bulging knot in his groin area. If you remember from several months ago, we had been to Stanford once before to have what we thought might be a hernia checked out. At the time, the physicians assistant (PA) we saw told us that what Normy was experiencing was most likely something called a hydra seal, and would probably go away in time and that we were to simply watch and wait. When we were there the condition did not manifest so she could only base her conclusion on what we told her. However she told us that if it was a hernia and if it did eventually strangulate what to expect and that we should bring him STRAIGHT to Stanford as that would be an emergency condition.

We had not seen or thought about the bulges for several months. As predicted they vanished, the openings seemly closed up on their own; until Wednesday night that is. Just as the PA had described, this bump could not be pushed back inside him (unlike what we could do when it presented itself before). Plus, in the past we could touch it with no problem, but if we so much as breathed on this new bulge he would FLIP OUT. Smoochy and I looked into each others eyes with fear and unanimously decided to get out baby to the hospital.

I’ll gloss over the flurry of activity that ensued in the five minuets in between our decision to leave and us actually walking unprepared out the door. I will say Normy was only wearing a diaper and t-shirt, I hadn’t showered yet that day (after a jog), and Jacob hadn’t been home from work a half hour. We were a mess. Then to top it all off, we took the wrong bridge to get there. Awesome.

Thank God we were on our way to Stanford, and as far as hospitals go, they rock. From the time we got to the Emergency Room to the time we actually saw the first resident couldn’t have been more than an hour. The resident quickly deduced that in fact Normy had a strangulated hernia and that Smoochy and I were not over reactive first time parents. The resident, attending, and surgeon all agreed that the best course of action was to reduce the hernia as opposed to surgery, and they all took a turn trying to accomplish that goal.

“Reducing the hernia” meant that they wanted to push it back inside him in order to buy us some time so that we could schedule his surgery for a couple days later after his swelling had gone down. This sounds simple enough but it was the most agonizing thing in the world to watch as a parent. My baby was beside himself with fear and pain by this point. Every time someone touched his hernia he was set off again. Plus setting an IV was a monster challenge as he is such a chunky monkey that it was nearly impossible for the nurses to find a vein. They poked and poked and poked him in the arm before they at last gave up and poked him several more times in the foot before they finally hit there mark. I was a wreck.

To reduce the hernia they sedated him with a drug called Brevitol, for which we had to sign a pretty standard release. We were told the most serious risk to this fast acting and short lived (hence BREVitol) sedative was that it had rarely been known to cause kids to stop breathing, and so it would only be administered to him once every once was set and ready to go and only with a second doctor standing ready to resuscitate him if necessary. Once they had knocked Normy out they went to work vigorously kneading, pressing, and massaging his strangulated bowl trying to get it back inside. It. Was. Not. Gentle.

Like I said, the resident and the attending doctor gave it a try. After they were unsuccessful, they called in the surgeon from home to attempt as well. She too kneaded, and wrenched, and palpitated my baby’s poor little groin. The hernia would not reduce. I can not express to you how intense and frightening this was to watch as a parent. Dose after dose of this sedative was given to my baby as the last would wear off. He’s such a little tank that he took more to keep him down than they give most babies. I watched his heart beat get lower and lower on the screen that monitored his vitals.

The surgeon decided that the hernia was not going to reduce and began preparations for surgery. The operating room was readied and the anesthesiologist was called and on her way to our room. We were seriously 30 seconds from leaving for the OR when after one last try (accompanied by one more dose of sedative) the hernia finally reduced completely. The surgeon pumped her fist and said, “YES!” There was a collective sigh of relief from all the medical professionals who were crammed into the room.

From there they were on the fence about whether to send us home with instructions to watch Normy closely for various symptoms of trouble or whether to admit him to be monitored for the night. The doctors were leaning towards sending us home because they did not have the bed space and I was leaning towards asking to stay because I was so freaked out.

Normy decided for us. He passed the most giant enormous bright red IHOP pancake sized puddle of blood into his blanket. Though the doctors reassured us that this was a result of the strenuous palpitation on his bowl, and not necessarily bad they definitely wanted to observe him through the night to be sure that part of his bowl had not been choked to death (which would have necessitated that segment’s surgical removal). This sure put his sun burned cheeks into perspective.

However, as I just wrote the hospital was very short on beds so at midnight we were at last admitted into Lucile Packard’s NICU, which was the only spot they could find.

The NICU nurses were wonderful, and completely in love with their comparatively giant new charge. They set us up with what they called a “big boy crib” and a rocking chair in-between the islets of the tiniest of tiny little-bitty preemies. I tried to take the first watch with but it turned out that Normy really needed his daddy. When I tried to rock him to sleep all Normy wanted to do was nurse and he was prohibited from eating in the event he needed to have surgery immediately. In Smoochy’s arms however he could rest. So for the first four hours Daddy and Normy rocked and rocked and rocked.

It was about nine the next morning when the doctors told us they couldn’t get Normy into surgery until early next week and he was cleared to eat. From there out our hospital stay was fairly uneventful. We watched and waited as Normy proved to us that he was alright to be released. His temperature remained normal, he could keep his milk down, and by late afternoon there was no more blood in his poop. Yea! It was about five o’ clock when we started packing up and doing his check out exam.

It had been easy to ignore the far too small little bundles of babies in their clear plastic boxes. Most of the isolettes were covered with brightly colored blankets so that the eternal florescent day of the NICU lights wouldn’t intrude into the pseudo-wombs. The babies who's incubators were uncovered were themselves so tightly wrapped that there was hardly a tiny little face or foot exposed. Except for the occasional slight and small cry I think I had hardly been aware of the other babies.

It was easy to stay completely focused on OUR sick baby. We had worries of our own; after the stress of the ER and a sleepless night spent in a hospital rocker, both of us had become very withdrawn into ourselves and our family. However, once I was happily bundling Normy in his own jammies and chatting somewhat loudly with him about what a cute baby he was and so on, Smoochy leaned in close to me and whispered, “Shhh Becca, just remember there are other parents in here who won’t be taking there babies home tonight, if ever, and even if they do they might not ever be normal like our little guy. And just like that suddenly the gravity of the NICU finally reached me.

I had watched when they brought in an unfathomably tiny 26 week old girl and get her stable in the isolette next to us. I saw the tears streaming down the fathers face as he watched them attach the ventilator, the monitors, and the many many wires whose purpose I can’t image. But it wasn’t until Smoochy whispered to me that I finally took it all in. All along we had been there with our rosy cheeked smiling chubster with his scary but not to threatening strangulated hernia and these parents had babies they could not hold, babies who may never see, or count to ten, or be able to play sports.

I think whenever a parent brings a health baby home from a trip to the Emergency Room they have a new appreciation for the gift of their child. However, for us our trip to the NICU heightened that gratefulness. Normy is an amazingly tough and happy little boy. His resilience is impressive and we were so relieved to get home last night with our son. We were home to our shower, and our bed, and our family. As for his hernia: he is scheduled for out patient surgery this Tuesday. We are all just glad that in a few days this whole thing will be behind us!