Our Angel Baby 03

Little changed all through that most miserable of days. Minor temperature or pressure fluctuations, 280, 265. Back up to 275 and 280. No further change for two hours. That’s it. Karin’s condition remained very critical. By the end of that second day we had no reason for hope but the residuals were there. To tell the truth, much of that day we spent in the Hospital chapel or other churches praying. Yes. Praying. Me, the avowed agnostic, the atheist in disguise. Reduced to blubbering tearfully in one church after another. Pleading with God to spare our child. Begging for her life without shame. Promising anything, everything, if only she were spared the sword of death that hung so perilously close to her head. So young. So innocent. So tiny. A happy, perfect baby who brought us nothing but joy. Spare her, please, God. Please, God. I cried so much I thought I should be dehydrated.

Somehow we slept straight through the 6:00 AM alarm I had set the night before. Perhaps I half heard it and turned it off in mid-ring. At 8:45 the telephone’s insistent clanging woke us. San groggily reached for the phone, knocked it off the night stand, grabbed it and dropped it again before finally answering. “Hello. Yes. Yes, Dr. Gago. Yes. What?” She exclaimed sharply. I couldn’t tell if it was from horror or what. Then she said, “Oh, God. Oh, God. Thank you. We’ll be there in less than a half hour.”

“What? What is it? What happened?” I demanded, frantic to hear good news but terrified for the worst.

San grabbed my hand and pressed it to her face, tears running down her cheeks. “Bob, it’s wonderful news. Karin’s better. She’s improved a lot since yesterday. Her pressure dropped to 230 last night and has stayed low for over six hours. And her fever is down.”

“What’s her condition,” I asked, leaping out of bed and hunting for clean clothes.

“Still critical but a step down from very critical. Dr. Gago wants us to come in to his office immediately.”

Thirty short minutes later we were in Gago’s office. Both he and Dr. White were there. Dr. White gave us a brief run down on what was happening.

“Yesterday afternoon we discontinued the medication to counteract the pulmonary hypertension. The critical period was last night. Your daughter seems to have gotten through the night extremely well. Her pressure varied from 230 to 260, with the majority of the readings in the low end of that range. She appears to be stabilized around 240 to 250. That’s down from yesterday’s average of 275. Considering that she’s no longer on the medication we are much more optimistic about her outcome.”

“Mind you,” Dr. Gago interrupted, waving a stern finger at us. “She’s still critical and unless her pressure continues to decline her chances are not good.”

But for us it was wonderful news that brought with it that most wonderful of all emotions, hope.

By noon Karin’s temperature was 102º and her pressure a steady 230. When we were allowed in at 6:00 PM I snuck a peek at her chart and saw the pressure readings, recorded at 15-minute intervals, ranged between 220 and 250. But there were many more in the 220 to 230 range than the higher numbers. For the first time in three days we felt there was a chance for our daughter to live. A real chance.

Dr. Gago called our house the next morning at 6:25, just as we were headed out the door. Karin’s pressure never rose higher that 220 all night. And at that moment it stood at a normal post-op of 180 over 95. Her temperature was 100º and appeared to be falling slowly. If she remained stable all day she would be taken off the critical list and discharged from the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit and returned to the Pediatric Ward. And yes, we could see her as soon as we arrived at the Hospital. And no, we didn’t have to take Tigger away any more. The fluid build-up was gone. Drive safely, he urged. Your daughter is going to recover.

Better words we had never heard. We yelled and cried our relief and happiness, weeping tears of joy, jumping up and down like crazy people, waking Virginia and David and probably everyone in the building. We didn’t care. Karin was going to live. That’s all that counted. Karin was going to live.

Oh, happy, happy day. The sun shone again. The earth turned on its axis once more. Our beautiful angel baby was going to live. Thank you, God. Thank you, thank you.

*     *     *

The last part of Karin’s stay in the Hospital was relatively uneventful. Except for the nearly constant stream of amazed doctors who wanted to see her and examine her chart. Each and every one commented that her case made medical history. According to Dr. White no infant with such acute hypertension that lasted three full days had survived. Not one.

But the most emotional visit was from Dr. X, Karin’s pediatrician. He came into the room slowly, very subdued, asking if we had time to talk to him. Which of course we did. In the most sincere tone he apologized to us for failing to make the correct diagnosis and then, overcome with emotion, he couldn’t continue. It was the first time I had seen a doctor cry and tried to comfort him. I told him that both Drs. Gago and White said that he did a great job in finding the defect. We weren’t angry with him at all and wanted him to continue as our pediatrician. Which he did and was until we moved from Michigan.

During Karin’s recovery Dr. Gago came to look in on her very few days. On one of those visits he told us that he thought Karin pulled through for one reason only and it had nothing to do with the medical care she had received. He was convinced she made it because she was a very strong and healthy baby. He thought the key to her survival was in her excellent physical condition. Despite having as severe a PDA as he or Dr. White had ever seen or ever heard about, she exhibited almost no external symptoms. She never was sick, even with minor colds. Nor was she ever breathless when she would play outside. She was just an exceptionally strong, healthy infant. The reason she probably developed hypertension was the size of the duct and the amount of blood flowing through it. Dr. White had estimated about one-third of her available blood supply was simply circulating from her heart to the aorta to the pulmonary artery and back. When the PDA was closed her system was unable to adjust to the sharply increased flow and went into hypertension. But it was her own strong little body that finally brought itself back to normal and got rid of the hypertension, not the drugs, and not even the medical care. Even though, he said with a laugh, that he thought that that care was exceptional. And I agreed wholeheartedly, holding back my feelings about the nursing care she had received while first in the Pediatric Ward.

Karin was released from St. Joseph’s Mercy Hospital exactly one week to the day after leaving the Intensive Care Unit. Over the next few months, as she recovered, San and I talked about how we should handle the scar issue. Scars on boys are signs of manhood, passages of which to be justly proud. Naturally, as a girl and later a young woman, we never wanted her to be ashamed of or embarrassed by her scar. So, we told her from the earliest moment that the scar was a sign that she was a very special person. That no one in the country who had her problem had lived. She was the very first. And that made her very special and was something to be proud of.

To our collective relief, our interpretation took, big time. To our delight, Karin would frequently offer to show our adult friends and strangers her scar. And when they would show some polite sign of mild interest she would whip up her blouse and show them. And we would laugh when their eyes would invariable pop out of their heads. I mean, it was and is a monster scar with many hundreds of stitches. Over the years Karin would always win the “Who’s Got the Biggest Scar” contest young grade school kids never cease to love playing. But she was never ashamed of it. Never once.

Today, her scar has shrunken in comparison with the rest of her body, since scar tissue does not grow, and is hard to see from any distance except up close. Even when she’s wearing a bikini it’s hard to see because it has faded until it’s the same tone as her skin. It still extends from her left armpit around to the middle of her back. But now her heart and arteries are perfectly normal.

She was our angel baby who became our miracle child.