Peace, In the Emergency Room

I knocked on the door again, louder this time, but still no one came to answer it.

"Maybe Aunt Tammy forgot," I told the kids finally, although it really surprised me.  Tammy didn't usually forget things.  "Or maybe something came up.  Anyway, I guess you'll have to come run errands with me."

We walked back to the car and I re-buckled the little ones in, reformulating my plans as I went.  I'd been planning to run errands and make some visits while the kids played with their cousins, but I couldn't take them visiting with me.  We'd just have to run the errands.

"Hey, look mom!" Linnea exclaimed a few minutes later.  "There's the movie place we went to last year."  Sure enough, we were on the west side of town, and there was the dollar theater we'd discovered a while back.  A sign proclaimed a Disney movie was being shown, and I got an idea.

"Dad was going to work late tonight," I said, "but maybe he will change his mind and we can go to the movies."  After all, it was Friday, and this was usually our date night.  Maybe Sheldon would come.

After we got home I called him at work.  "Yeah, that sounds like fun," he agreed when I explained about finding the movie.  "I can catch up on work another time."

By the middle of the afternoon Stephen, who was eleven months old, began to feel warm.  I gave him some Baby Tylenol, then called mom.  "I don't think he's really sick," I told her, "but would you mind letting him stay with you tonight?  He might get fussy at the movies."

Mom was happy to keep Stephen for the evening, so we dropped him off, then took the kids to see "The Great Mouse Detective".   It was fun, but I couldn't really concentrate for feeling guilty about leaving Stephen.

As soon as the movie ended we hurried back to moms, but the second I walked in her back door I knew something was wrong.   A couple we knew were sitting on the couch in the family room, but mom and dad and Stephen were gone.  They jumped up as soon as I walked in, and with stricken faces they told me my parents had taken Stephen to the hospital.  My heart stopped.  What was wrong with my baby?  I ran out to the car and told Sheldon to get us to the hospital, fast! 

Mom and dad were waiting in the Emergency Room when we got there.  They explained that they had been visiting with their friends, mom holding Stephen on her lap, when suddenly he threw his head back and starting shaking and jerking all over.  Dad gave him a blessing while they tried to sponge him off, he was hot and getting hotter, but he didn't stop seizing so they rushed him to the hospital.  Thank goodness their friend who was visiting was a Registered Nurse and knew what to do.

The doctors had immediately taken Stephen back to be examined, but when we got there they still didn't know what was the matter.  A Hospital Chaplain came out to talk with us, but all he could say was that everyone available was working on Stephen and no one could stop to talk to us. 

On the way there I'd been shaking and scared, but once we got to the hospital and I knew Stephen was being taken care of the shaking stopped.  It helped having something I needed to do. I filled out insurance forms and admitted Stephen to the hospital, but I suppose I was in shock.  I remember standing by the admitting counter, feeling kind of hollow inside.

After filling out the paperwork I walked over to the drinking fountain to get a drink.  Mom and dad and Sheldon were talking and taking care of the other kids, so I just stood on the other side of the room for a minute and prayed.  My first thought was to ask Heavenly Father to take care of my baby and make him be OK, but then a curious feeling came over me.  It was peace.  I knew, as I stood there by the empty admitting counter, that everything was going to be OK.  Not that Stephen would be well, but that whatever happened it was in God's hands and I didn't need to worry. Even as I felt the peace, I wondered at myself.  It surprised me that I could feel so calm and not upset at the prospect of loosing my baby.  The overwhelming feeling that comforted me was that if Stephen should die he would be fine.  He would just go home to Heavenly Father and he would be happy and safe and loved, and everything would be all right. 

We waited in the emergency room for about half an hour.  It was eerily quiet.  Even though it was a Friday night we were the only patients.  Eventually a nurse came to get Sheldon and me.   Our family doctor had arrived and we were able to go back and talk to him.  He told us that Stephen was stabilized, they'd stopped the seizures and had a tube down his throat so he could breath, but they didn't know what was wrong yet.  They were doing a spinal tap to see if he had meningitis, and then they'd do a brain scan to see if there was something wrong in his head. 

"You were really lucky," our doctor told us.  "There just happened to be a Neurologist in the emergency room when Stephen came in, and he asked if they needed help, so he is in charge."

I raised my eyebrows in surprise.  "Is there usually a specialist on call in the emergency room?" Sheldon asked. 

"No," our doctor replied.  "I don't know why he was here, but it's not usual at all.  Neither is it normal for the emergency room to be totally empty like it is tonight, but there you have it.  All of the nurses and doctors have been working on Stephen, and they are doing the best they know how to do.  You can go back and see him for a second, if you would like."

I followed the doctor back through the maze of curtained examining stations until he reached the bed where my baby was lying.  Poor Stephen!  He was out cold, but he was still having a rough time breathing with the tube down his throat.  My composure slipped when I saw him laying on the big, white bed, tiny and vulnerable and in distress.  I had to take some deep breaths and think about the other kids out in the waiting room so I wouldn't burst into tears.  They were all so tired, it was late, but they were being so good.  I knew I had to be strong for them, so I gulped down my tears, breathed slowly, and then walked slowly back out to the waiting room.

It wasn't long before the Neurologist called for us to come talk to him.  The spinal tap was clear, there was no meningitis, and so was the brain scan. 

"I have no idea what is wrong with your baby," he admitted helplessly, "but all we can do now is watch him and wait to see what happens."

Mom and Dad said they would take the other kids home with them, so Sheldon and I went back to be with Stephen.  After awhile they took him up  to a room in the Pediatric Ward.  When he was settled in Sheldon went home to get some sleep, and I tried to get comfortable in the arm chair next to the crib.  Then Stephen started seizing again.  All the doctors and nurses came running back up from the emergency room, and while they worked I tried to call Sheldon, but the phone was busy.  The doctors were able to stop the seizures in about five minutes, and eventually I got through to Sheldon, but by then there wasn't anything for him to do so he didn't come back.  Once again I tried to settle down, but I wasn't able to sleep much that night.

Stephen began gagging on the tube in his throat the next morning as he started to wake up.  Finally the doctor took it out, which was a relief for both Stephen and me.  Then they they let me hold my little boy.  I had to be careful of the IV in his hand, but besides that it was wonderful! 

Stephen slept most of the day, but by afternoon his IV worked it's way out of his hand.  The poor nurses worked all afternoon trying to replace it, but they couldn't get one in.  Stephen was miserable, crying and moaning like he had a headache.  I rocked and walked and struggled to keep him calm until he finally wore himself out, falling asleep while the doctor tried to cut a vein in his foot so he could insert a new IV.  It didn't work, so in the end a surgeon had to cut Stephens ankle and put the IV there. 

That night Stephen woke up and cried for an hour and a half with a headache before we finally got him to calm down, poor little baby. I was pretty worn out myself by then.  The next morning when Sheldon came I ran home to grab a quick shower.  Stephen started crying while I was gone, and after trying to quiet him for an hour the nurse finally got the doctor to give him some Tylenol with Codine.  That helped, and he didn't cry any more after that.

In the meantime, Linnea, Holly, and Russell had all come down with mild fevers and headaches while they were staying with mom.  It looked like they might all have some kind of virus, the doctor called it viral encephalitis  When we looked it up we found that it can be carried by mosquitoes, so maybe the kids got it from being bit the week before when we were up at the cabin. 

Anyway, Stephen got better after the second day, and he was released from the hospital two days later.  He seemed to be totally recovered, although the doctor made us give him phenobarbital every day to make sure he didn't have any more seizures.

It sure seemed like Stephen was a miracle baby.  All of doctors and nurses in the emergency room called him that.  They couldn't believe he recovered so completely, they had been sure he would not make it through the first night.  Then there were all the coincidences that worked together to keep Stephen alive.

If Tammy had answered her door that morning, (it turned out she and her kids were in a back room and hadn't heard us knock) the kids would have stayed with her and I wouldn't have taken them to run errands.  We wouldn't have seen the movie theater or decided to go to the movies that night.  Sheldon would have worked late, I would have been home alone with the kids.  When Stephen had the seizures he would have been in bed and I might never have even heard him.  It would have been called a Crib Death. 

Add to that that mom was holding Stephen on her lap visiting with their friend who just happened to be a pediatric nurse when Stephen started seizing; the emergency room just happened to be empty so everyone was free to work on Stephen; and a neurosurgeon just happened to be there that evening, walked by, looked in, and asked if they needed help.  There were an awful lot of just happens that day.  I didn't know what Heavenly Father had in mind, he obviously wanted us to go through this experience, but he made absolutely sure that everything was set up ahead of time to pull Stephen through.

Months later I learned that this experience was a major fork in the road for Sheldon.  It was as if Heavenly Father took a moment that night to take Sheldon by the shoulders, shake him, and say, "Wake up!  You have two choices before you, and the path you choose right now is going to affect the whole rest of your life." 

For me, it was also a major turning point.  I came out of that night knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that Heavenly Father loved me, and that I loved him.  I'd hoped I had enough faith that I could turn my life over to him and trust him to take care of me, but now I knew I did.  That, I discovered, was the secret to peace.