Thursday, September 15, 2005
The Birth of Little "Skywalker" - Epi 4 - The Truth?Slightly more than a year ago in a hospital not that far away....
As I said, I didn’t know how to break the “bad news” to J about our baby. I didn’t think she is emotionally stable enough to take the news after all the hormones flowing frantically throughout the labour process. Apparently the baby of a colleague of J died a month after birth due to drowning during labour. So, I told the baby was fine and need to rest due to all the stress during birth. I excused myself to follow-up on our son at NICU.
I met up with my mum. Being an ex-nurse and mother, she knew exactly what was going on in the NICU. She talked to the doctors who treated my son and got herself up-to-date before I did. She told me that the baby is suffering from lack of oxygen, he is being put on respirator machine to help him breath. Apart from that, he is also experiencing fits (抽筋) due to lack of blood circulation to the brain for a long time. Brain scan shows some part of his brain has some fluids in them. He needs the respirator machine to pump enough oxygen to his brain to clear it off.
I was lead to where my son was sleeping. Tears flows through my eyes as soon as I saw the poor baby got hooked up to no less than 3 machines by his bed-side in order to keep him alive. There was the main machine where he was sleeping on which monitors his heart bead, blood pressure, brain activity as well as skin temperature. There was another machine that feed the medications into his body through his belly-button directly and one more to regulate his breathing. The medications are to control his fits, which is probably the worst thing that can happen. I can see his arms and legs experiencing fits constantly although he's asleep.
That was the moment that I felt totally helpless the first time in my life. All I could do was stand there and listen to the good doctor about the condition of our son. According to him, his odds of surviving are not that good, and even he survives, there are no telling of possible brain damage. He even showed me scans of my son’s brain that shows a few white spots in some areas. His skins are showing a bit of pink already, though still a far shy of the normal pink color. A few tests on his blood are due back in the next few days.
Meanwhile, J has been transferred to the ward and resting. I went to see her and slowly let her in on our son’s condition (albeit far less from the true picture). I told her that our son is slowly showing improvement on his skin color but the doctors administered some drugs to let him sleep and rest. Since J was not allowed to move within the next few hours, I told her to have a good rest and I will bring her to see our baby in the morning.
I was lucky that she bought my bluff, well, at least for now…
continue to Ep 4.5 - The Truth? (J's account)
Jotted down by Egghead :: at around 9/15/2005 02:10:00 PM :: and invited 3 Blah(s):
3 Blah(s) by:
,
Egghead,
Shannon,
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