Yesterday Andrew seemed a lot happier than in the few previous days. He was awake when I arrived, so I said hello, put my finger in his hand so he could hold on, and then had a seat. He drifted in and out of sleep, but he was quite calm throughout. He was kicking his legs quite a bit (think football, not fussy), and he was generally very cute. I sat there for more than two and a half hours and he held my hand the entire time. I had to get up and move around to let the nurse get near him a few times, but he kept a tight grip.
At 6:30pm, they kick everyone out of the NICU for the nurses' shift change. Someone from the front desk makes an announcement over the intercom that all parents/visitors have to leave. I stood up, pulled my finger out of Andrew's hand, and that's when he went nuts. He had been perfectly calm for almost three hours, but it was letting go of my finger that set him off. He started to cry, turned red, arched his back, and dropped his saturations. It wasn't a big deal, and he does the same thing pretty routinely...but it made me feel a little more comfortable that he was calm while I was there.
About Me
- JR
- D's husband. Andrew's dad. Son, friend, cousin, nephew, grandson....the list goes on.
About This Blog
This blog was originally created to disseminate information about Andrew, our son who was born on June 15, 2007. Andrew was born with a congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH) that allowed abdominal organs (stomach, intestines, etc) to migrate into his chest cavity during development. This prohibited normal lung growth, making it difficult for him to live without significant life support, including a ventilator, a lung bypass machine called ECMO, and a long list of medications.
Andrew spent the next five months at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego, undergoing multiple operations for the hernia repair, intestinal rearrangement, stomach tube insertion, etc. Multiple attempts to help him breathe on his own without a ventilator were unsuccessful due to a number of anatomical and developmental difficulties. Andrew's failure to progress and an abundance of overwhelmingly unfavorable test results led us to remove him from life support and let nature take its course on November 19, 2007.
We greatly appreciate the time we were able to spend with Andrew, and this blog continues as a source for information, a tribute to his memory, and a continuation of our lives without him present. From the emotional to the mundane, our lives have been forever changed by his presence; those lives are now chronicled here.
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