Three weeks ago, I was sitting in my house working on plans for our new school year. Little did I realize I was about to take an incredible journey, unlike any other I had ever taken.
Aaron had been working hard all day, working hard at getting out of doing his chores, that is. He had employed every trick in the book: trips to the bathroom, slipping out the back door, you name it. Finally, at suppertime, I called him in again, and told him he needed to empty the dishwasher, or we would have nothing to eat with.
He came in and complained of being dizzy. It was a very hot day, so I suggested he sit down a few minutes and rest in the a/c with a drink. However, I believed his dizziness was just another ploy to get out of unloading the dishwasher. Until he began to vomit.
My 1st thought was that Aaron had picked up a stomach bug. Stomach bugs are not pleasant with any family, but with a large family, it is a whole new level of unpleasantness, again and again.
A few minutes later, I sat down to watch the evening news, which is a rare occurrence for me, since it comes on when we are usually eating supper. They had a short segment on heat exhaustion. It caused me to re-assess the situation with Aaron.
I immediately had him get into the bathtub, while I called our family doctor's office. After a couple calls back and forth with the doctor, and more vomiting, he decided he felt we cold ride this out at home, as long as the vomitting did not increase. Aaron's temperature was normal, he was taking sips of fluid every 5-10 minutes, and his vomitting had decreased.
We kept him downstairs with us for the night, to observe, and encourage with fluids, and tried to get some sleep.
Morning came with increased vomitting. After a call to our family doctor, we headed for the ER. We thought we would get a bag of fluids, some medicine for the vomitting, they would do some blood work, and send us on our merry way. When Aaron gets any type of tummy bug, or upset, he oft-times would end up needing medicine to make the vomitting stop, we assumed this was another one of those times.
We were not prepared for what was about to happen!
The doctor came in, ordered blood work and an IV, just as we expected. When the bloodwork was done, he came in to give us the results.
"Your son is in renal failure" the doctor told us. "What?! How can he be in renal failure?" I asked. He said he did not know, but was calling the pediatrician down from the peds unit to see Aaron, and she would decide what needed to be done.
When the ER doctor left the room, Aaron looked at me and said, "God has this all under control, Mom". That is when I broke down and cried. We called our pastor, and he came right away to annoint Aaron with oil, for healing. (James 5:14-15a)
The pediatrician decided after speaking to the nephrologist at AI duPont that Aaron should be transferred there to be admitted.
While the phone calls were placed and the return call awaited, Aaron's oxygen level began to drop, and his cardiac rhythm began to become irregular. They place a nasal cannula on him, and his level continued to drop. They but on a mask, and still continued to drop. They put on a non-rebreather mask, had a respiratory therapist draw arterial blood gasses, and moved him into a trauma room, in the event they needed to intubate him.
At this point, the decision had been made to airlift Aaron, rather than send him by ambulance, to duPont.
Gene and I were in a panic. What were we supposed to do? The rest of the children, from Sarah down, were home by themselves. Gene decided to go home, to tell the children what was going on. We did not think that was something we wanted to tell her over the phone. And he wanted to pack things for me, since we would obviously be staying a day or two.
Before Gene left, Aaron told us that he did not want to die.
I was alone with Aaron when the helicopter came to get him. I prayed with him, and held his hand as they strapped him down in preparation for his helicopter ride. I kissed him at least a dozen times. He was alert and knew what was going on, yet he was calm.
The pediatrician walked with me to the waitingroom and offered to wait with me until Gene came back. I thanked her, and made a comment about not wanting to take her away from her work. In reality, I wanted to be alone, well, as alone as one can be in a busy ER waitingroom. I was alone in a crowd of strangers, and did not care that I was crying uncontrolably.
While I was waiting, my mom called. She said my brother had told her we were taking Aaron into the hospital and she was wondering how he was. I broke down and cried even more as I told her my son was in kidney failure. She put my brother on the phone. Fred told me to not let my mind go to places it should not go. He was confident God would perform a miracle. More tears, as I told him I was talking to a miracle. (Fred's life is a miracle of redemption.)
My cell phone rang again. The helicopter made it to duPont and Aaron wanted to talk to me. He sounded good, a bit scared, as one would expect, but good.
After what seemed an eternity, Gene picked me up, and we were on our way with our mapquest directions.
No comments:
Post a Comment