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Its 10:30pm and I am sitting beside Lila at Mass General Hospital NICU. It has been a very long day as you can imagine, let me explain how I got here. It started this morning around 5:00am when the nurses became concerned with Mandi’s breathing patterns. It was decided that she too should join Lila in the special care unit (just a nice word for NICU) of Newton-Welsley hospital (this is where they were born). Like Lila it was not serious but she needed some extra attention. You could imagine how this would make one feel, it sure was not good. We now had two girls taken from us and placed in separate care beds on another floor from their mom and dad. We fought through the tears and I immediately went up for a visit. Carrie at this time was still bound to her bed with an iv and catheter and it was going to be a few hours before she could leave. Given the fact that she had been cut open just 12 hours earlier this was understandable. However like any mom would she conveniently accidentily disconnected her catheter and sped up the process quite a bit. After walking to the bathroom and proving the miracle mom she was, we were both able to go visit the twins. She was tired so we didn’t stay as long as we would have wanted, but they were both stable so we headed down stairs to wait for Hampton and Gavin who were on there way to see their new sisters.

Now at this point in our ridiculous roller coaster of a day I am having trouble fighting back all of the emotions, especially when we make it downstairs and the boys are there ready to give their mommy and daddy great big hugs. I almost lost it. Carrie and I decided that we had to let the boys see their sisters, regardless of their state. So we explained their conditions, asked if they had any questions, and headed on up again for a short visit. The boys were elated to see their sisters, however they were a bit disconcerted with the medical apparatus surrounding the twins. They observed and touched, then we said our goodbyes and headed downstairs once again. When we got downstairs it was agreed that the boys could have some daddy time and we would head home together (leaving Carrie’s mom who has been watching them, at the hospital) for some lunch, daddy play time, and a nap. I said my goodbyes, packed the boys in the car, and headed home for a few hours.

We were on the road for about fifteen minutes when I receive a very distressed call from Carrie. Lila was not getting enough Oxygen and something was gong to have to be done. Air was leaking into her chest cavity from someplace and there were three things which may occur: 1) penetrate her chest with a needle and siphon out the air, they did this twice and it kept occurring so on to 2) Provide her with a surfactant to promote lung cell proliferation, not immediate enough so the final case 3) insert a chest tube to constantly siphon off the air. Now you have to understand, this was explain to my wife who in tear explained it to me while I was driving the kids home. All the while they are performing these fairly emergent procedures as we spoke (we were unaware). So I have to continue home, no choice…the kids can’t go back to the hospital in this mess. I get home and make lunch, fight to keep it straight, and wait for Carrie’s mom to make it back to take care of the kids.

OK so now Carrie’s mom is home and before I leave Hampton tells me he is worried about his sisters (me too) and my heart sinks. I have to explain to him not to worry (he is freekin 4) and that he can call anytime he feels this way and we will talk about it. I compose myself and race off to the hospital.

Who knows what I am thinking now, not great stuff thats for sure. I get to the hospital and no one knows anything, I call the NICU and they just brush me off. Carrie is pretty upset at this point and so we decide to just walk up there and find out what is going on. We blast through the doors and I am thinking the worst, but she looks OK to me, minus the fact she now has a chest tube in and is on a ventilator. There is some doctor talk and I am settled a bit, however now we are worried about the same thing happening to Mandi. We have some friends and family by, we calm a bit, and we prepare for what is coming next.

OK, why I am I sitting at MGH? Well Newton-Welsley does not have a level 3 NICU (its only 2) and you are not allowed to have an intubated baby for more than 4 hours in a level 2 NICU. Soooo, there is a huge operation at hand, they show up with this star trek enterprise looking apparatus to transport Lila to the new hospital. The process is amazing and the people from MGH are excellent. Its a bit difficult to watch this process but after its over I feel pretty good about her level of care.

And now I am here, in this fantastic new hospital in the middle of Boston, Lila is doing great with all of her high tech equipment, and I am happy. I just got done conversing with the great staff here and Lila’s nurse is just about as good as it gets. I called over the other hospital and Mandy has been stable, which is good. Hopefully she won’t have to go through this same ordeal. It 12:17am as I finish writing this. I am going to head back over to be with Carrie for the remainder of the night. I certainly hope this all turns out OK. I feel good now but we really need to get these girls healthy and home. Physiologically they are great, they just need to grow into their lungs. I know I left a bunch of stuff out, but I am tired and there is still a long road ahead. The short of it is that at this moment things look good but it was not always so. I will write again as soon as I get some free time. Thank you all for the well wishes, comments, text messages, e-mails, phone calls, and visits. It means the world.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 27th, 2008 at 12:24 am and is filed under Personal, The Kids.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.