The Day That Seem to Never End

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Brian got up bright and early to help his brother move a desk. We planned to go to the hospital to see Kennedy once he got back - around 11:00. I woke up at 7:00 am but forced myself to fall back asleep. I had a dream that something bad had happened or was happening to Kennedy. I was then awaken by my home phone....I knew something was wrong. I didn't answer the house phone because I was not ready. When my house phone stopped ringing my cell phone began....I reluctantly picked it up. It was Grace from Queen of the Valley. She explained to me that I needed to come down to the hospital and sign some paperwork for Kennedy to get a blood transfusion. I told her I would get in the shower and be right down. Apparently that was not going to happen. Dr. Goldstein got on the phone and told me that this was critical and I needed to get down to the hospital ASAP. I threw on a hat and some clothes and rushed to the hospital. I didn't even have time to brush my teeth. I was frantically trying to get a hold of Brian, my Mom, anyone.....

I arrived to the hospital and Kennedy looked really sick. I signed the paperwork and Kennedy received two blood transfusions over the next six hours. My Mom, Dad, Brother, Brian, and Mimi all arrived at the hospital around the same time. They all came in to see Kennedy. We met with Dr. Furman who told me that he was going to try and get Kennedy transferred to another hospital. He said he was going to make some calls to some people at Loma Linda and see if he could get Kennedy in TODAY. He came back thirty minutes later and said they would accept her, but, they had to wait for a bed to open up.

We got the news at 12:00 pm that the transport team would arrive at 3:00 pm - she was in! A bed had opened up and there was a spot with her name all over it. However, things started going downhill fast. About an hour and a half before the transport team arrived Kennedy started getting the cold sweats and her body temperature was dropping. She looked very pale and her eyes were beginning to role back into her head. I advised the nurses that something was going wrong. They went and got her some warm blankets - WHAT!!! I told them that this is not something that warm blankets is going to fix. She felt like a dead body.

The transport team could not arrived at a better time. They came in with a transportable incubator and about eight bags full of equipment. They gave Kennedy a quick look over and told me that she looked worse then they were told. The nurse got her blood pressure and looked at the number in shock. She said is that hers. I had to tell her that she wasn't seeing things -her blood pressure had been that high for the last three days. Brian and I were asked to step out and wait for them in the waiting room. We were out there for about 45 minutes but it felt like 45 hours. I kept walking back and forth to the window to see what was going on, but I couldn't see anything. I was talking to the Charge Nurse when Sue, out favorite AM Nurse told me that they had to put an IV in Kennedy's head. She told me they were unable to get it in anywhere else.

The lead transport RN came out to talk with us. She told me things didn't look that good. She gave us a couple papers to sign and said we would go over them once we got to the hospital. Right now she didn't have time. She informed me that she walked in on a situation that was far worse then she was told. She said that if she knew it was this bad they would have came via helicopter instead of via ambulance. She said that Brian and I should head out to Loma Linda since the ambulance was going to be driving as fast as humanly possible. She said she was going to do a blood gas and go from there.

Brian and I were on our way.....I was in shock. How could Kennedy have gone from one extreme to another. I received a call from Dr. Furman. He told me that Kennedy was struggling to breath and the transport team was going to have to re-initbate her. I called Queen of the Valley 15 minutes later to see if the ambulance had left. Dr. Furman got back on the phone and said they were waiting for the helicopter.

We arrived at Loma Linda and went up to the Children's Hospital to check in. As we walked in all you could hear was all the nurses talking about a really sick baby in transit to the hospital. Then I heard our last name and sick baby. Everyone was talking about my sick baby.

I called my parents to see where they were. They had just arrived. Brian and I went out to get them. As we met up with them in front of the hospital we heard this loud noise in the background. It was a helicopter - it was Kennedy's helicopter. The helicopter came flying around the building and towards the roof for landing. It was the most surreal feeling to watch all of this take place. All I kept thinking was how did this all happen? What did I do wrong? Why is this happening to me?

I went up stairs to check with the front desk to see if Kennedy made it off the helicopter. They told me that two teams were waiting for her arrival and as soon as they have her stable the attendee would be out to talk with us. Thirty minutes later Dr. Merritt came out to speak with us. He told the four of us that it didn't look good for Kennedy. She was very sick and her body had gone into shock as was beginning to shut down as the transport team was at Queen of the Valley. She was very critical and they were going to do everything in their power to get her a little more stable.

Dr. Merritt was great....he came out every hour to give us updates. He told us that they were trying to figure out what was wrong with Kennedy, however, they were still unable to figure anything out. He informed us that her PDA had blown back open due to her high blood pressure. He also said they were looking at an Inborn Error of Metabolism as a possible prognosis. In addition, she was several infected. Her white blood cells were through the roof. After about three hours Dr. Merritt came out one last time to tell us that Kennedy was still very critical but they had stabilized her for the time being.

Brian and I were finally able to go in and see out baby girl. She looked horrible. She was very swollen and had blood all over her. Kennedy was intibated again, they put an arterial line in her foot, a femoral central line was stitched into her groin that goes directly to her heart. She also had an IV in her head. Her right arm was covered in blood because they had tried to put other IV's in but were unable to because her veins were no longer working.

Brian and I drove home at 2:00 am. As we walked in the door we got a call from Dr. Merritt. He told us that they were going to be giving Kennedy some anticoagulation medicine because her blood was beginning to clot. The nurse had pulled a large blood clot out of her lung which helped Kennedy breath a lot better. I was home laying in bed thinking that we are back to square one - heck were are worse then square one. All I wanted was my little girl to pull through.