A Will to Survive

In Georgia, in the year 1986 in the merry, merry month of May...um, let's start over, shall we?

At only 9 months old the fight of my life would soon begin; the doctor had admitted me immediately to the hospital for surgical repair of VSD (hole in my heart). The 'Tet' spells were a sign that the time had come to receive the first of many heart repairs.

In this particular moment, my mom was nursing me in the hospital room when a group of nurses suddenly rushed in, ripped me out of her arms, tied my wrists to a board and set me on a hospital bed to wait out the evening...and then the long night. Surgery had been scheduled for the next morning, and when morning came, the operation time had been bumped. And bumped. And bumped again. By the time they finally took me back, it was well after three in the afternoon, and I had gone hours without eating, and hours with my arms strapped to that board.

A shunt was placed in the heart to allow proper blood flow. After completion of surgery, the complications started. First, the skin turned blue. The shunt placed was much too small, and my body was not getting enough blood.
Late that night I went back in to surgery to replace the smaller shunt with a larger. My parents were told it was much too late to visit me and to head home, rest and come back in the morning to check on my status.
Around two in the morning the Cardiologist called. He spoke to my parents, informing them that the second shunt ended up being too large which allowed too much blood flow through the body. My lungs were drowning in blood.

Rushing to the hospital, my parents could do nothing but wait out the third surgery. The Cardiologist walked briskly out of the surgical room, looked at my parents for only a split second and continued walking. He had no intention of stopping to report the status of my condition with my parents. They feared the worst had happened.

The final shunt placed in to the heart was in fact the larger shunt they had used previously, but because there were only two sizes available the cardiologist ended up stitching the larger shunt to make it 'just right'.

Finally after grueling hours waiting, my parents were allowed to visit the ICU post third surgery. Only allowed ten minute visits during each hour, my parents patiently, yet anxiously watched the clock on the wall and when the time came, rushed to the visitor phone to check and see if they would be allowed back. At this point in time, the outcome of me living through the week seemed slim.

It had only been 72 hours since being first admitted into the hospital.

For two weeks I had a respirator, and the oxygen setting was on so high, that oxygen gathered beneath the skin, and when touched, you could hear the skin crackle.
Each time my parents would go in for a visit, I would close my eyes, then turn my head the other way.  They would walk around the bed to the other side and I would again turn my head.  My parents knew I was angry and I refused to look at them.

For those entire 2 weeks post surgery, my arms would remain strapped to the bed, tied down, twenty-four hours a day.

Then a miracle came.

On Mother's day my parents arrived to the hospital, went up to my room in the ICU and were told that I had been moved the night before to a regular room. In to a crib.
During the whole ordeal of these weeks, the church members of my parents congregation took turns with my two older siblings, Makenna and Jacob, shuffling them from house to house so my mom could work in the mornings, go to the hospital in the afternoons and stay until late evenings.

Going in to surgery I weighed eighteen pounds, and after finally leaving, I was down to only eleven pounds at ten months old.  However, I was doing well, and the time had come to go home.

Upon getting ready to leave the hospital, the Cardiologist approached my dad. He told him that now that all was well, that I was healthy, he wanted to share with him something.
The night he had called to inform my parents that I was drowning, he had been laying in bed with his wife. He rolled over after hanging up the phone with my dad and said, 'There's no way this baby will make it."
As he later walked past the waiting room after the third surgery, he purposefully avoided updating my parents on my progress. He knew that I would not make it. The doctors and staff were certain I would soon die.

Finally home, a somewhat regular routine returned. I was prescribed to be on a diuretic and baby aspirin daily and a friend of my mom's had advised that she get a lock box as pill bottles in those days did not have childproof lids.
A few days later, my mom went out for groceries, returned home after the errand, and set the bags on the table, grabbed Jacob - 27 months at the time - and set him up on the counter. Something was off. He was lethargic.
From a distance she spotted a pill bottle in the corner of the counter, the lid removed.
She grabbed the bottle. It was completely empty. There were 36 orange-flavored aspirins in the bottle, and only 4 had been used. "Jacob! Where are the pills?"
He pointed to his tongue and with slurred speech said, "Ate them mommy."

My brother Jacob had eaten 32 baby aspirin.