The day we brought her home was the first day I would dress in actual clothes and head out to the real world. During the first week, I had help from my mom and our sitter during the day, but evenings were all my own, and like all new moms I was exhausted from lack of sleep. We went on our first outing since leaving the hospital, a routine check-in with Ellis’s pediatrician. It was a quick in and out, mostly to check her weight and make sure she wasn’t losing too much, as is typical for some newborns. The pediatrician looked her over and told me she was perfect. Perfect. Those are the words every new mother wants to hear.
My dad was driving us that day since I was still on postbaby driving restriction. As we drove home, I was thinking about hospitals and doctor’s appointments. I didn’t like them. Not at all. And though my birthing and pediatric experience was pleasant, I still wish I never had to step foot in any medical institution ever. In Joel’s battle with cancer, we had been in far too many hospitals. I felt like I had met my quota for the rest of my life. It represented some of my life’s most painful moments, not just physically but emotionally as well. Even though my last hospital experience was the joyful arrival of my little girl, I still didn’t feel comfortable in one.
“Dad,” I started in, “I hate hospitals.”
“Okay…,” he said, waiting for the rest of my remarks.
“It’s just that Joel has been gone for a year and a half. And in that year and a half, it’s been nice to not have to battle for a life, going from hospital to hospital,” I said.
He nodded in understanding.
“Don’t get me wrong, I would gladly sit at a hospital all day long just to have Joel back with me. I would never trade what I have for no hospitals. But I will just say, that if there’s one small silver lining, it’s that I haven’t had to spend so much time in hospitals. I hope I never, ever have to do that again. It’s horrible,” I told him.
“Well, that’s certainly understandable. You’ve had quite the journey the past few years,” he agreed as a front-row witness to it all.
Merely a week later, those very words would come back to haunt me. In a big, big way.
That night was like most nights with a newborn—Ellis wasn’t interested in sleep. I could rock her, swing her, jostle her, nothing worked. She didn’t want her bed, and she didn’t want her swing. The only thing she wanted was my arms. So I held her most of the evening, trying to calm the fussiness and get her to drift off to sleep.
By 7:00 a.m. I was finally able to calm her down and get her to rest in the swing in my bedroom. By 7:30 my babysitter came in to get her and take her to the living room so I could finally get some sleep. I lay down in my bed, exhausted from the long evening, and was excited to close my eyes and drift off. It didn’t last long.
Thirty minutes later my door swung open, and my babysitter flew in in a panic.
“Sarah,” she said. “Wake up! There’s something wrong with Ellis!”
I sat up quickly, completely disoriented as to what was happening. She had never before run into my room and woken me up like that. I had also never before seen the look that was on her face. I pride myself in being calm in emergency situations, and this was no different. I tried to quickly assess what was going on and calm my babysitter down.
“What is wrong, Kaylee?” I asked her.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with her. She has been wincing in pain nonstop, and she feels warm to me. Really warm,” she said, her voice rising.
I reached over and took Ellis from her arms, quickly putting my hand to her forehead. She was right—she felt warm. My mind went back to the pediatrician’s office the week before.
“For a baby, any temperature over 100.1 degrees is an emergency,” she had told me sternly.
I looked over at my clock. It was only 8:00 a.m. The doctor’s office would not open for another thirty minutes.
“Go get the thermometer,” I directed her.
She raced in the room and came right back. I pushed the thermometer to Ellis’s head—99 degrees. I tried it again—98.9. I tried it again—100. Her reading was dancing all over the place.
“It’s okay, Kaylee,” I said, trying to calm her down. “She’s going to be okay. I’m going to call the pediatrician and get her in today. Don’t worry.”
I was trying not to worry myself.
At 8:30 a.m. on the dot I called the pediatrician and was, of course, directed to a nurse.
“What’s her temp?” she asked.
“I can’t get a straight reading. It keeps changing on me,” I replied.
“Have you taken her temp rectally?” she asked.
“No, I haven’t,” I said.
She instructed me to go find our digital thermometer and take her temperature that way as it was the most reliable.
I ran to the medicine cabinet and found the thermometer. I placed it under her armpit first and took it that way—99 degrees. Next I checked it rectally—100 degrees. I grabbed my phone and called the nurse back, telling her of the conclusion.
“It sounds like she’s not quite to the danger zone. It’s your call if you want to go ahead and bring her in.” She put the ball in my court.
I looked down at Ellis. She was sleeping now, but off and on she would wince in pain. I couldn’t quite tell, but it also looked as if she was getting a little pale. As much as I would prefer to just treat an illness at home, my gut told me this might be serious.
“I think I would like to go ahead and bring her in, just to be on the safe side,” I told them.
They put me down for the first open slot—one o’clock that afternoon.
I spent the time until then holding Ellis. Her fussiness was growing by the hour. She had taken her morning bottles, but by the afternoon, she no longer seemed interested. I was glad one o’clock came quickly. Still exhausted from being up over twenty-four hours with no sleep, I’d hoped the doctor’s visit would be quick—that I could get Ellis to lie down and get some sleep myself.
We arrived at the pediatrician’s, and they swooped us back to a room. The nurse took her temperature via the armpit—99 degrees. I let out a sigh of relief. Hopefully I was just imagining things, and they would send us on home. My worst fear was a trip to the ER, all on my own.
The doctor came in a few moments later, took Ellis from my arms, and laid her on the examining table.
“Does she look pale to you?” she asked me immediately.
“I was kind of thinking that she did,” I answered truthfully.
She took out her thermometer and placed it in Ellis’s rectum. It beeped, signaling the results were in. She looked at the reading, scrunching up her face.
“One hundred point one,” she said.
My face fell. I knew what that meant.
“Sarah, I’m sorry to say this, but I am going to have to send you to the ER. I am going to make a call and tell them you are on your way. Don’t go home first, don’t stop for anything—go straight there,” she said, her voice serious. She didn’t tell me what she thought was happening then, but later on I found out she had her suspicions immediately that Ellis was a very sick little girl.
“Okay,” I said simply. I felt the fear rising and the tears threatening to come along with it.
This was every mother’s fear, taking a two-week-old baby to the hospital because something was wrong. It was especially difficult in my circumstance—without my Joel. I was terrified.
The doctor had me quickly pack Ellis up in her car seat and head over to the local hospital. On my way there, I desperately tried to calm my nerves. I told myself over and over again it was going to be okay. Things like this happen—it’s not going to be a big deal. As much as I tried to convince myself that was the case, I couldn’t help but feel it was far more serious. Things were happening at such a rapid pace; I knew it could be something really bad. My intuition rarely failed me. Deep inside I had that same foreboding feeling that life was taking another devastating turn.
The ride to the hospital was over before I knew
it. I pulled into the entrance labeled ER in bright red letters. Thankfully the lobby was empty and the intake was swift. They took Ellis, put her on the table, and started to put in an IV so they could take her labs. As they worked, I frantically texted my family and friends to tell them what was happening, asking them to pray. Not long after, my mom was able to leave work and join us. I was so thankful to no longer be alone. The relief was short lived when I saw the concern on my mom’s face as she looked Ellis over.
It took over an hour for them to get an IV in her tiny little veins. Baby veins weren’t made for IVs—they also weren’t made for hospitals.
An emergency room pediatrician came in the room and told us all the tests they were going to run on her. When they got to a spinal tap, my stomach turned.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, a spinal tap? On a brand-new baby?” I said in shock.
“Yes,” she answered. “We always like to rule out meningitis. I know it sounds scary, but it’s necessary. Don’t worry, Mom, most likely it’s RSV, and you all will be out of here within forty-eight hours or so.”
I felt like all the air was gone from the room. I was terrified for my daughter, who by that point seemed to be getting more and more pale. She also seemed to be more lethargic, not even crying in pain as they continuously poked her small frame with needles.
Another doctor came in the room and told me he was going to start the spinal tap procedure. He listed out all the bad things that could happen but told me the test was still necessary. He advised me to wait in the waiting room down the hall since it might be difficult for me to watch. My mom volunteered to stay in the room with Ellis. He walked me down the hall to the room and told me he would be back in about forty-five minutes or so.
I sat in the chair and pulled out my phone, replying to incoming messages from my friends desperate to know what was happening. It was then I heard a scream from what I thought was the doctor’s voice.
“Mooooooooooooooooom!” the voice yelled.
Surely that couldn’t be for me. It had to be for someone else. I sat still in my chair, hearing footsteps charging toward the room. My room. The voice calling for a mother was calling for me.
A moment later and the doctor was in the room, practically pulling me up from the chair and back to Ellis’s room.
“Mom, there’s an emergency. When I turned her on her side to start the test, she went blue and almost stopped breathing. We have her on oxygen now and are going to have to transfer her to Children’s in Oklahoma City—just in case she needs to be on a vent,” he said with urgency.
Wait? What? A vent? What was happening right now? What was going on with my daughter? I felt disoriented and confused.
“I’m going to call a transport team. We are going to take her in an ambulance with lights and sirens,” he said.
I walked beside him, silently, in absolute shock. We finally reached her room and I saw my sweet girl with oxygen connected to her face. They were loading her up in her car seat and putting her on an ambulance gurney. My mom’s face was white as a sheet. My heart was aching.
“I am going to follow behind the ambulance. I will call Dad, and we will meet you there,” she said.
They loaded her up in the ambulance with me in the front seat. I could hear the wail of the sirens as they peeled out of the hospital, heading north up the interstate to Children’s Hospital.
We have all seen ambulances pass by us before, sirens and lights blaring. It was surreal to be the one inside the ambulance as we sped up the highway, cars veering to get out of our way. As we got closer and closer, my prayers became more and more frantic.
“I don’t know what’s going on, Lord, but please be with my girl,” I said in my feeble attempt to find words in this moment.
The terror inside my heart was rising. This was unreal. She had to be okay. She just had to be okay. I was vacillating between disbelief and shock. How could this be happening again? Another life-threatening situation in the midst of what was supposed to be a celebration of life.
We took our exit off the highway, barreling toward the hospital. The driver took the first right, and we were a block away. I looked out the window and saw a familiar building, the main hospital where my husband died. Suddenly, I was furious. I had lost him not even two years ago. Now, I had Ellis in an ambulance on oxygen because she couldn’t breathe. What was happening, and why was it happening to us? Hadn’t we been through enough? That same feeling of dread was rising just as it had with Joel, and I shoved it down as far as I could.
They pulled into the back entrance of Children’s Hospital and rushed the gurney into the ER. I followed closely behind. My mom and dad stood by my side, seemingly appearing out of thin air. No one said a word.
We got back to a room in the ER as the transport team handed her charts over to the ER team. A male nurse took Ellis out of her car seat and placed her on a table. She was lethargic and barely moving. One look at her and he ran to the intercom.
“I need a doctor in here now!” he yelled.
The room instantly filled up with no fewer than ten people, all running around the table that held the small, fragile body of my baby girl. I instinctively backed out of their way while not taking my eyes off her. The commotion was frantic. I felt as if I was going to faint. Someone came over and told me she had nearly stopped breathing again, and she needed to be placed on a ventilator if she was going to live.
Not a vent. Anything but a vent, I thought.
Memories were swirling, racing through my head of her daddy on a vent. Begging for a miracle. Removing her daddy from a vent. Saying good-bye. No, no, no, this could not be. She was our miracle baby, and it seemed cruel that this part of Joel might now be taken from me, too. It was more than I could bear. Her struggling to breathe? I thought of her dad struggling to breathe on a vent. He was an adult who had lived a full life; she was a helpless baby at the very beginning of hers. She never even had a chance.
There was no other choice but to sign my name to the sheet of paper being forced under my nose. The tears blinded my eyes as I, once again, made a horrific but necessary decision to save the life of my loved one.
Within minutes, the room was filled with even more people as the tube was inserted down her throat and the vent turned on. I looked at the clock. It was 7:00 p.m. It had been a mere eleven hours since my babysitter had stormed into my room saying something was wrong. Now my precious daughter was on a ventilator, clinging to life. I still couldn’t comprehend it.
The room finally emptied, and I could walk over to her bed. I looked at her all covered in wires, the beeps and chimes going off. Unfortunately I knew from prior experience what all the numbers on the machines meant. I looked up at the monitors and saw that her blood pressure was high, her heart rate even higher. I took her little hand in mine, not believing what was happening. Once again, it seemed like a bad dream. I wanted to take her and run out the door.
One of my girlfriends showed up and came in the room, putting her arm around my shoulders. She noticed my legs were weakening and gently guided me to a chair. I collapsed in sobs.
The doctors came back and told me tests had revealed my Ellis had bacterial meningitis and was in septic shock. I had no idea what any of it meant. I had heard of meningitis before and knew it was serious, but I hadn’t known it regularly took the lives of babies, as my doctor explained to me. I remembered our babysitter had had meningitis before and recovered from it just fine. I figured it was something Ellis would quickly recover from and be home in no time. I had no clue there might not be any going home. I wouldn’t let myself go there. I couldn’t. I refused to believe there would be anything less than a full recovery. My heart could accept no other fate.
They told me they were going to transfer Ellis to the PICU, and I could follow her up. Once we got to the floor, we met the PICU doctor. She told us they were going to put a central line in Ellis that would allow them to access her vein easily for numerous medications. I should have known then this would not be a qui
ck hospitalization.
They sent us to the waiting room for what they said would be a short procedure to put in the line. By that time a few hours had passed. I’d sent my mom home to be with Milo, to keep things normal at the house and relieve the babysitter. My dad and I, along with my girlfriend, sat and waited for the procedure to end.
“Sarah, did I tell you about the woman from downstairs?” she said.
I shook my head, confused. “No…what woman?”
“Well, when we were downstairs, this random woman came up to me, pointed to Ellis, and asked me if it was my baby. I told her no, it was my friend’s baby. The lady looked in the room at Ellis and said, ‘That baby’s going to be all right. God just told me, she’s going to be all right.’ The funny thing is, this woman appeared from nowhere. She even had gold teeth! But she was so sure when she said it. It was like she knew something we didn’t,” she said.
It wasn’t much, but it was something I could cling to. That baby’s going to be all right. God had told a stranger my baby was going to be all right. She had to be.
An hour had passed, then two hours. We were still in the room, waiting for them to finish her line. I knew something was wrong. I could feel it in my gut. It shouldn’t be taking this long.
Finally, a resident came out to speak with us. She asked me for a rundown of the morning and what had led us to the current events. I went over them methodically. Woke up with a slight temperature. Was cranky. Went to the doctor, who sent us to the ER. She nearly stopped breathing there, so they sent us here. That was it. No other symptoms or any warning signs that would lead us to where we were now.
“Ellis is a very sick little baby. You just need to know that. She’s a very sick girl,” she said to me seriously.
I was irritated as she stated the obvious. Granted, most normal families would need to be talked to in simple terms. This, however, was no normal family. We had been through a three-year journey, ending with a six-week nightmare with Joel. I knew what a vent was and what it meant. And I knew it was bad if she was sick enough to be placed on one.
From Depths We Rise Page 13