Think I'll pack it in and
buy a pick-up
Take it down to L.A.
Find a place to call
my own and
try to fix up.
Start a brand new day.
The woman I'm thinking of, she
loved me all up
But I'm so down today
She's so fine, she's in my mind.
I hear her callin'.
See the lonely boy, out
on the weekend
Trying to make it pay.
Can't relate to joy,
he tries to speak and
Can't begin to say.
She got pictures on the wall, they
make me look up
From her big brass bed.
Now I'm running down the road
trying to stay up
Somewhere in her head.
- Neil Young, Out On The Weekend
Our hospital experience last month - the emergency admit; the suddeness of Owen's open heart surgery, even though we knew it was inevitable; surgery day and the PICU waiting room; holding our breaths in anticipation of a recovery roller coaster; the tubes and wires, beeping machines and alarms, rising temperatures, infiltrated IVs, dried blood; the waiting for something to go wrong; watching for the red lines indicating his own breathing to outnumber the green ones of the respirator; rounds and what they might reveal each morning; babies crashing down the hall and staring helplessly at hysterical parents pushed out of their distressed child's room; not sleeping after he was taken off the monitors for fear we'd miss a slowing heart or an oxygen drop; the little boy across the hall and his three-months-and-counting wait for a whole new heart; fingering the sample of Gore-Tex used to rebuild our little boy's heart; the meeting prior to surgery where I almost backed out, wanting to take the easy route for me and raise him as a sick little boy after we reviewed the risk of death, stroke, brain damage, organ damage and infection; the meeting when I asked them, "If we don't do this, he dies, right?"
So many terrifying memories that I plan to write about here, when I'm ready. I talk a lot to friends and family about Owen being traumatized by the experience, but maybe I'm really talking about me.
There is one memory that I love. When I recall it now, it has the surreal quality of a dream.
We'd been discharged and we were just coming off of the George Washington Bridge, getting on to I-95. In 20 minutes we'd be home, but in the moment it was just the three of us. I was sitting in the back seat with Owen, who was saucer-eyed and smiling at me while he gripped my finger. Ted was driving. It was snowing and I don't remember hearing the road below us or the traffic around us. It was just the three of us and it felt like we were suspended in time - this peaceful, private place to just sit with what we'd been through between our departure from the hospital and all its horror and our arrival at our home where excited family members awaited us with hugs, kisses and champagne.
Ted turned on the CD player and it picked up where it had left off, playing Out On The Weekend from Neil Young's Harvest album.
When we'd arrived at the ER and the doctors decided we weren't leaving, a kind and gentle nurse came in to "put a line" in Owen, so they'd have access to his vein from here on out. Not something easily done on an 11-week old. It was awful and the baby I'd spent the last 11 weeks keeping from crying, screamed in what can only be described as complete and utter pain and terror. His oxygen saturation dropped steadily and my hands shook as I held the blow-by oxygen to his face. The curtain to our room was open and a mother stared at us, clutching her own child whose arm was in a cast, to her chest. The tears I'd been straining my eyes to hold back slipped down my cheeks as I saw the look of pity in her eyes - pity for me, the baby's mother. She shook her head slowly back and forth as her eyes teared up. She held my gaze. For the first time I believed what all the doctors had been saying: that this was going to be much harder for me than for Owen.
Owen was lying on the bed still screaming as the nurse gave up and let go of his little wrist which had been bent all the way back toward his arm to give them access to his veins. He was bruising immediately and his entire body was bright red and soaked in sweat. His blond hair against his red skin suddenly looked like gold. It was shining and I thought for the millionth time since he was born how perfect he is. He was trying to catch his breath, but was having a hard time calming himself and then I heard Ted's voice quietly singing - whispering almost - in Owen's ear.
Think I'll pack it in and
buy a pick-up
Take it down to L.A.
And Owen's oxygen levels went up, his blood pressure came down, his tears dried up and he was soon sleeping peacefully, occasionally sighing in his sleep as we waited for what came next. For much of our hospital stay, we couldn't hold Owen because he was hooked up to so many wires. But we had that song and it reached our baby through his pain and fear when our arms couldn't.
buy a pick-up
Take it down to L.A.
Find a place to call
my own and
try to fix up.
Start a brand new day.
The woman I'm thinking of, she
loved me all up
But I'm so down today
She's so fine, she's in my mind.
I hear her callin'.
See the lonely boy, out
on the weekend
Trying to make it pay.
Can't relate to joy,
he tries to speak and
Can't begin to say.
She got pictures on the wall, they
make me look up
From her big brass bed.
Now I'm running down the road
trying to stay up
Somewhere in her head.
- Neil Young, Out On The Weekend
Our hospital experience last month - the emergency admit; the suddeness of Owen's open heart surgery, even though we knew it was inevitable; surgery day and the PICU waiting room; holding our breaths in anticipation of a recovery roller coaster; the tubes and wires, beeping machines and alarms, rising temperatures, infiltrated IVs, dried blood; the waiting for something to go wrong; watching for the red lines indicating his own breathing to outnumber the green ones of the respirator; rounds and what they might reveal each morning; babies crashing down the hall and staring helplessly at hysterical parents pushed out of their distressed child's room; not sleeping after he was taken off the monitors for fear we'd miss a slowing heart or an oxygen drop; the little boy across the hall and his three-months-and-counting wait for a whole new heart; fingering the sample of Gore-Tex used to rebuild our little boy's heart; the meeting prior to surgery where I almost backed out, wanting to take the easy route for me and raise him as a sick little boy after we reviewed the risk of death, stroke, brain damage, organ damage and infection; the meeting when I asked them, "If we don't do this, he dies, right?"
So many terrifying memories that I plan to write about here, when I'm ready. I talk a lot to friends and family about Owen being traumatized by the experience, but maybe I'm really talking about me.
There is one memory that I love. When I recall it now, it has the surreal quality of a dream.
We'd been discharged and we were just coming off of the George Washington Bridge, getting on to I-95. In 20 minutes we'd be home, but in the moment it was just the three of us. I was sitting in the back seat with Owen, who was saucer-eyed and smiling at me while he gripped my finger. Ted was driving. It was snowing and I don't remember hearing the road below us or the traffic around us. It was just the three of us and it felt like we were suspended in time - this peaceful, private place to just sit with what we'd been through between our departure from the hospital and all its horror and our arrival at our home where excited family members awaited us with hugs, kisses and champagne.
Ted turned on the CD player and it picked up where it had left off, playing Out On The Weekend from Neil Young's Harvest album.
When we'd arrived at the ER and the doctors decided we weren't leaving, a kind and gentle nurse came in to "put a line" in Owen, so they'd have access to his vein from here on out. Not something easily done on an 11-week old. It was awful and the baby I'd spent the last 11 weeks keeping from crying, screamed in what can only be described as complete and utter pain and terror. His oxygen saturation dropped steadily and my hands shook as I held the blow-by oxygen to his face. The curtain to our room was open and a mother stared at us, clutching her own child whose arm was in a cast, to her chest. The tears I'd been straining my eyes to hold back slipped down my cheeks as I saw the look of pity in her eyes - pity for me, the baby's mother. She shook her head slowly back and forth as her eyes teared up. She held my gaze. For the first time I believed what all the doctors had been saying: that this was going to be much harder for me than for Owen.
Owen was lying on the bed still screaming as the nurse gave up and let go of his little wrist which had been bent all the way back toward his arm to give them access to his veins. He was bruising immediately and his entire body was bright red and soaked in sweat. His blond hair against his red skin suddenly looked like gold. It was shining and I thought for the millionth time since he was born how perfect he is. He was trying to catch his breath, but was having a hard time calming himself and then I heard Ted's voice quietly singing - whispering almost - in Owen's ear.
Think I'll pack it in and
buy a pick-up
Take it down to L.A.
And Owen's oxygen levels went up, his blood pressure came down, his tears dried up and he was soon sleeping peacefully, occasionally sighing in his sleep as we waited for what came next. For much of our hospital stay, we couldn't hold Owen because he was hooked up to so many wires. But we had that song and it reached our baby through his pain and fear when our arms couldn't.