Broken Promises

Chapter 6 - The NICU, Part 1

 March 10, 1999

I finally was allowed into the NICU to see you after a couple of hours, but I was not present. My body was there, but the rest of me was not. I recall a very nice NICU nurse walking me through the entrance steps. I pushed a button and waited. Eventually, a nurse verified my identity and let me in. She told me how to wash my hands. The smell of that soap. I still smell it. The smell of nothing. No, it is the smell of hopelessness and despair. She was patient as I mentally could not struggle through even this mundane task. Something as simple as washing hands became an impossible task. She helped me as if I were a little child.

When she walked me into the NICU, you were on the other side of a very large room full of other broken babies. You had so many tubes in you, a breathing tube, catheters, IVs, and a feeding tube. There were so many wires coming off you, connecting you to monitors and alarms. It was hard to see you through all the technology. Then there was the smell of the NICU. It had the lingering aseptic smell of a hospital mixed with a nursery smell. A smell that is hard to explain but that lingers in the mind. It just smelled wrong.

You were breathing so hard and fast you appeared to be levitating off the bed. I was terrified. The doctor said your body was in distress, even though you were on a ventilator with oxygen. He told me it was normal after a brain injury. Those words, brain injury. Your breathing would return to normal in time. It was just so very rapid. I cannot recall your face, but I can clearly see those vile tubes and wires. They were the only things tying you to this world.

I sat there for so long, watching you. At some point they allowed me to bring our family in. Your mom could not see you that night. They made an exception to the number of visitors, as this was such a critical time. In the back to the left. That corner was yours. I do not think the nurses expected you to make it through the night.

One thing that I must say. Those NICU nurses loved you and the other babies. It was personal to them. I saw them smile and laugh at first milestones. I had one hold me and cry with me while I sat there alone the first night. Another caught me when I collapsed from exhaustion later that week. She joked that I would not like the infant CPR she would do on me if I hit my head. I pray for many blessings on them. They prove angels walk the Earth. They became family. They became the only ones I fully trusted with you. The conversations we shared, the prayers, it was intimate and meaningful. They understood. These people mattered, and most important, you mattered to them.

I could not sleep. I was not sure if you would make it through the night. I was also afraid of what would come with sleep. There was too much to process and at least awake, I could try to ignore it. Those days were a blur of anxiety, nightmares, and despair. It felt unreal. This is not what was supposed to happen. Nothing prepared me to see my newborn child in that situation. We are not made to process this. The mind devolves. The only way you can continue is for pieces of yourself to die.

The first NICU doctor I met was a gentleman whose eyes spoke volumes. I met him that first night after they stabilized you. He told me, along with some other family, that it was too early to know the level of damage. Your mother was in recovery at this time and was not allowed to get up until day two or three. Your diagnosis was hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, which is just a fancy way of saying brain damage caused by lack of oxygen. They later expanded the diagnosis to cerebral palsy, which is damage to the brain before or during birth. It causes issues with muscles, tone, spasticity, and other coordinations we take for granted. He explained that CT imaging would tell us what the extent of damage was. We would do one CT scan the next day and compare it to a week later. This would allow us to see the brain cells that the oxygen loss had destroyed by comparing the changes between scans. The first scan was expected to show a normal scan. The dead brain cells would dissolve away over the next week. We would then see what was left in the second scan. He said we did not need to decide anything right then, but I understood. My rational side said this would not end well. The father side was still foolish enough to believe in miracles.