Intensive Care

Last Sunday Cormac came down with what seemed initially like a benign cold but an urgent care and 3 pediatrician appointments later, he had a RSV, bronchilitis diagnosis. Then a couple of increasingly nerve wracking days counting breaths per minute and watching a progression of breathing retractions, we found ourselves driving through the worst of rush hour traffic to the pediatric ER. As I drove white knuckled onto the off ramp to the hospital, my mother-in-law (who Matt had the intuition to enlist the help of even before things had escalated) had counted Cormac to have taken 70 breaths per minute. By the end of the night, that number rose to 100.

Though we were admitted almost immediately, the hospital was so overwhelmed with RSV cases, we stayed overnight in triage - a small, windowless room with a gurney and two chairs. As the night wore on, the increasingly fragmented communication and haphazard care under fluorescent lights felt utterly desperate. They talked about how his stats looked better with some of their treatments but all I saw was Cormac's whole body working at full force, like a galloping steed that would at some point wear out. Later, in the bleary eyed chaos of the wee morning hours, it hit me all-at-once that despite 2 IVs packs and the couple of ounces of pedialyte he was able to keep down before this all picked up speed Cormac had not had a wet diaper in over 10 hours. A power of panic and hell raising emotional force came out of me that I never knew could be contained within my spirit and frame as I demanded how in the world I had not seen a blue line spread across his unchanged diaper.

The next hour and a half was a flurry of clearly also panicked hospital staff as they realized how behind and out-of-depth we all were on caring for this 7 month old whose body was at a breaking point. Tests were ordered and run, phone calls were made and multiple physicians became involved. I could physically feel how bloodshot and wide eyed I looked while I followed the physician down the hall with Cormac in my arms. It occurred to me as I vaguely recognized the other parents looking on to our desperate looking scene that I was that person - that mother. In that moment, I was the woman playing out the scenario those other mothers feared and were thankful they were not.

Before opening the doors the doctor said with measured calmness but purpose, "This room may look a bit frightening but we just need more space to work." It didn't register what he meant until the doors pushed open and I walked into the trauma room. It was like walking onto a movie set for something I no longer think I would ever have the stomach to watch.

After tests, questions, wails from Cormac and then the threatening cadence of his labored breathing I was told that a transfer was in progress to take us to Dell Children's Hospital ICU.

Somewhere during these desperate moments, Cormac was put on a highly pressurized CPAP, then a gurney where capable gloved hands began patting his chest with force and compassion. "There you go sugar bear. Yeah. I know you don't feel well. I hear you sugar bear." I silently blessed those hands as they coaxed coughs out of Cormac's chest.

When I heard the sirens from the ambulance taking us, my panic rose for several breaths, wishing this was the kind of transport that didn't require such a dire sound. Then I recognized it as a loud warning to all around of how precious a cargo we were carrying. How those shrill cries were signaling to all within range that this wee soul was of paramount importance and in great distress. It was the banshee wail that had been rising within me for the hours leading up to that moment.

The next hours and then days became round the clock meetings with physician after physician, comforting and crying, dozing but seemingly never sleeping and decision making about how much to test and challenge Cormac and how much to assist him with elaborate apparatuses I had never seen up close. We kept Cormac’s room dimly lit as an effort to encourage rest but the space was crowded with lit up machines beeping at each drop and rise in everything respiration related. Never before had I considered how much must come together in perfect sequence for us to maintain our daily breath.

As adrenaline wore off, Matt and I found ourselves feeling utter frustration, even resentment, at our own human requirements. What an injustice it was to be so limited by physical needs such as food and sleep when that time was needed to support this small person going through 24 hour, day-after-day distress beyond what his body could bear. Trading off who went home to to attend to basic care such as showering and stringing together a few hours of sleep was a struggle. The walk into the living room alone, seeing his abandoned toys on the floor or recognizing his smell wafting out of his room wrecked us both beyond words. Being destroyed with exhaustion was the only way someone could sleep under such circumstances.

Yet each day, in such modest of increments, they weaned him back to room air. I remember when they removed his cannula. It was like he was joining us back again from some sort of apocalyptic universe where the earth’s atmosphere was no longer safe. Soon after the feeding tube was pulled, the IV withdrawn and the small red glowing sticker on his toe that had told us how much oxygen was flowing through his veins, we packed up and left the hospital for home. Nurses cheered as we walked down the hallways. Cormac gave his winking smile on the way out. Matt and I felt a mix of gratitude and anxiety.

We were so lucky and yet how precarious we all three are to live and be mortal. Our bodies are endless systems, highways with infinite intersections that all must harmonize and synchronize signals to keep us breathing. And as precarious as that always has been to think about my own body that way, nothing seems more miraculous in this world than each moment where I am able to care and keep this small soul. I am more acutely aware than ever before how incapable I am to keep all of these harmonies and synchronizations in place for his well being. Yet, I do wonder if the devastating love that moves through each and every system within me can somehow steady all the parts and pieces that must remain in place for him to live and to thrive. I have to believe that because the alternative is the most helpless and hopeless thing I can imagine.