When We Almost Lost Him

I wanted to share about the time we almost lost Henry. It was the most horrible week of my life. In March of 2004, Henry was 4.5 months old and he got sick. At first, we just thought it was a cold. but he got worse. On Tuesday night, the 2nd, he ran of fever of 102.9. The next morning, I took him to the doctor. He looked awful – lethargic and extra-floppy, labored breathing, hot, coughing – the whole 9 yards. All I got from the doctor was that I needed to get my hands on some breast milk and give it to him. I KNEW he was wrong. I KNEW it was worse than that. He was about to send me home with a phone number for La Leche League, when I realized that he was very, very sick. I said, “y’know, he’s just not right. He’s SO lethargic and with the high fever last night…”

The fever finally registered with the doctor and he said I should take to Children’s Memorial downtown right away. By the time we got him down there, his fever was 104. In front of my eyes, the ER went into overdrive with him – his oxygen sats were in the 60s and they rushed him back to get him on oxygen, take blood and all that stuff. They were in a panic to get him into a room – I remember the doctor going on and on about it and asking over & over if the room was ready. Finally, it was & they rushed him upstairs to the PICU. he was in an isolation unit at the end of the hall with his own nurse. His tiny, floppy body was all naked with tubes and monitors on him & a big, huge, cast-like thing on his arm with the IVs to keep them from pulling out. He kept biffing himself in the head with it.

They then put him on a BiPAP machine so he could breathe.  It was so big & he was so small that it wouldn’t stay on properly. He’d let out these little mewling kitten cries from inside that were all muffled and pitiful. We were able to get his pacifier in under the BiPAP, which helped, but due to all the tubes & wires, I couldn’t hold or comfort him at all. I could only stroke him & talk to him from his cribside. I can now admit that I was terrified. Even with the BiPAP, his oxygen sats weren’t going up at all. They kept saying, “We’ll keep trying, but we may have to intubate.” which scared me so much.

On night 3, as I was sleep on a cot in the waiting room, I was awakened at 4 am by, “Mrs. Sturm, you need to come…” I SHOT out of bed, jammed on my clogs and ran behind the nurse, trying to clear my head. She tried to calm me by saying it wasn’t an emergency, but in my befuddled mind, you don’t wake somebody up at 4am unless it’s an emergency.

When we got through all the automatic doors & down to his room, the doctor explained that he was just working WAY to hard to breathe & was so tired that they’d decided to intubate him so he could rest & get the oxygen he needed. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be there with him while they did it, so I had to wait in the hall. It all caught up there. I started sobbing. Thankfully, an amazing aide stopped to talk to me about it all – explaining that it didn’t mean he was getting worse, but just that this would help do the work for him so he could rest. She took a good 20 minutes to talk me down & I’ll always remember that. Once he was done, I could go in & see him. He was SO tiny & helpless, I just wanted to hold him & make it all go away.

He stayed like that for several more days & I just walked through the days; reading, watching TV, and going down to the cafeteria. He was sedated through all of it, so there wasn’t anything I could do for him. Just waiting. Finally, on the 8th, he was doing well enough that they could take him off the BiPAP & we could start feeding him the next day. I finally got to hold him again. My Squishy. I was so thankful.

During all of this, one song kept going through my head. I had woken up one morning and started singing, “You give and take away…You give and take away….” over and over. When I realized what I was singing, I started crying. It was as if God was saying to me, “You have to be prepared to accept whatever I’m going to give you here…” I immediately got angry, but the song continued to reverberate in my head. I needed to accept that God was wonderful – no matter what the outcome. I needed to bless Him even in my desert places, when I’m possibly going to lose my son. I just repeated these lyrics over and over – reminding myself that how I responded to this was a CHOICE. So…I chose to bless Him, even as I faced the worst possible scenario. I sang that song to myself so many times that week. Wonderfully, everything turned out okay. Henry recovered and is almost 6 now. But I’ll never forget how we almost lost him.