I think that the worst time of my life was when I was told that Becca would need open heart surgery to repair a heart murmur. We knew she had a heart murmur when she was born, but it had been gradually closing up over the years. During the first part of 1994 I realized that I could hear her murmur without a stethoscope. When I asked her pediatrician about it, he said that sometimes when they are closing up they get really loud and this was normal. Several months went by and the next time we went in he decided to send her to a cardiologist for an echo cardiogram. The heart had been building up pockets of muscle around the hole trying to make another valve out of it. At the time it was not giving her any problems, but the doctor assured me that at some point in the future it would start to obstruct the flow of blood through the heart. She was five and had just started kindergarten when we got the news.
I grew up in a time when open heart surgery meant that you went to see the patient before the operation to say your goodbyes. Patients did not usually survive the trauma of open heart surgery and if they did, it was a long slow recovery process. My mind immediately thought of the worse case scenario when the doctor told me and for the first time in a long time, I cried like a baby. Luckily the nurse had taken Steve and Becca to the waiting room to play with the toys so they didn’t see how upset I got. And thank goodness, modern medicine had come a long way and the chances of her not surviving were less than 5%.
Surgery was scheduled for the Tuesday after Thanksgiving at Egleston Children’s Hospital, with us going in on that Monday for all the pre-op work. To keep Becca from being scared and to keep my mind off of what was about to happen, I decided to keep a diary of all the events surrounding her surgery. I took pictures of everything that happened to her and kept notes about the times and what was going on. I knew that when she was older she wouldn’t remember anything about the surgery and would want to know what had happened.
I had decided that when they took her to surgery, I would finally be able to have a nice cry, but when the time came – Bobby and everybody else was crying, so, trying to be a good mom, I got a stiff upper lip and held it together.
The surgery went well and I continued to occupy myself by working on the diary. I stayed at the hospital the whole week because I couldn’t bear to leave my baby there. They had a nice shower area for the family and sofas in the waiting room that slept better than our bed at home.
When Becca came out of surgery, Bobby and I were the first to go into ICU to see her. We knew what to expect about all the tubes and bandages, so that wasn’t much of a surprise. She was still out of it so all we got to do was watch her. Bobby was so pitiful, all he could do was cry. I had been so strong through the whole ordeal because everyone around me was falling apart and I still had to be strong when all I wanted to do was cry for my poor baby.
The second time we got to go in, my mother-in-law went with me. Becca was awake but her hands were strapped down to keep her from pulling out any lines and she still had a breathing tube down her throat. My heart broke – she kept trying to say mama and to reach out to me, but she couldn’t do either one and I couldn’t even hold her. Well, that was my moment – I had to turn away so that she wouldn’t see me cry and I only cried for a few seconds, but it was enough to scare everybody in the room. When I left the ICU, the staff had a nurse and a counselor waiting to make sure that I was OK. I think I must have scared them half to death when I cried.
The next day when it was decided that Becca should be put in a regular room and they started removing all the drainage tubes, cath lines, etc, she would scream every time they pulled on the heart catheter. The cardiologist decided that rather than taking a chance on doing some damage, they would take her back to surgery to find out what was wrong. My poor baby had to go through a second surgery. Luckily it turned out that the catheter was hung on a loop of suture and there was no damage done so the surgery took just a few hours.
Tuesday morning came around and the whole family was there to wish her well. After they had given her the “happy juice” (a type of anesthesia) Steve knelt beside the bed to kiss her bye and she was so sweet, stroking his face and loving on him and then before we knew it, she drew back and hit him, knocking him to the floor then just laughed and laughed. I thought for a minute that Steve would probably take care of the surgery problem by just killing her on the spot, but being the sweet little boy that he was, he just got up and went back over and gave her a kiss. It was the greatest of Kodak moments and I was so in shock that I forgot to take a picture of it….. go figure!
She went back to the step down unit of the ICU and on Friday night was put into a regular room. At this point she had not had any food since early Monday evening. The cafeteria was closed but the nurses were so great – one went down and managed to bring Becca back some mashed potatoes and popsicles so Becca was in hog heaven! On Saturday they actually let her go home and I figured that I would have some time to get all of the Christmas gifts wrapped and do some decorating while she was recovering. Well, Becca had other ideas. Once she figured out that she didn’t hurt she was up and running and hasn’t stopped yet!
Watching your child go through something like this is one of the hardest things you ever have to do, you want so bad to take away their pain and make them better but you can’t. You have to trust that God has given you the best doctors and nurses to make them well again and that he will hold your child in his arms until he can place them back in yours.
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