March 30th, Two Thousand ...NATE (2008)

Two years ago today, I began this journey.  I haven't talked much about what happened before.  I wanted to share it today.  Like many of you, I have been through a lot and I have come a long way.  Here is the story of what started it all:

March 30, 2008
The day started off great. The ICU doctors did rounds that morning and all said that Nate looked great. All of his tubes were out with the exception of a one for his antibiotics. The cardiologist told us that his heart was functioning well and they were making plans to send him home within a day or two. The only thing that they were concerned about were his feedings. They told us that he needed to maintain full feedings in order to be released.  Erik brought the kids up at about 10:30 that morning. I met them in the hall and asked him to take the kids to the playroom for a while so that Nate could focus on his 11am feeding. When we were in Los Angeles, the kids weren't allowed to stay in his room for more than a few minutes, but at CHOC, we were able to spend time together as a family and the kids got lots of time to love on their brother. Because of that, his room was noisy at times and he sometimes got distracted eating. So, Erik and the kids went off to the playroom.

At 11am I started giving Nate his bottle. He ate 1/2 of it really well and I sat him up to burp. As I did, Nathan began to struggle and his monitors started beeping. The nurse came in to see if everything was okay and within seconds, Nate turned blue from head to toe. She grabbed him out of my arms and pushed the CODE BLUE button. Within a minute, a dozen nurses, doctors and respiratory specialists were at his bedside. It was extremely chaotic. I called Erik and told him that Nate was CODE BLUE and he needed to get up here. He left the kids with hospital volunteers and hurried upstairs. Together, we sat down in the back corner of the room and started praying. We asked God to let him live and begged him not to take him. The room became louder and more chaotic as the time went on. The doctors performed CPR and intubated him (breathing tube) and he came back --but his heart rate was sporadic and he was obviously in peril. As they did an echocardiogram, Nate was looking around the room and we were talking to him. We told him how much we loved him and we told him that he was going to be okay. The results of the echocardiogram were not good. They detected something--which they suspected was a large blood clot and before we were given an explanation doctors started yelling for a cut down tray. It was exactly like the traumas that we've seen on TV, only this was our kid and it was real. We were briefly told that they did not have time to get to the operating room and they handed us masks with instructions to put them on. Then, right in front of us they began operating on our baby boy. The hospital chaplain came in and sat with us. She repeatedly insisted that we call someone to start a prayer chain. Most everyone we knew was in church at the time so we just left a handful of messages. We kept thinking that any moment they were going to say that everything was fine. He was perfectly healthy just a few moments ago.



During the next hour, they frantically tried to save him. We kept hearing them call out for "more epy" and "more blood." His body temperature was too low so they were microwaving saline and trying to warm him up. We kept praying and pleading with God. There were glimpses of hope when the surgeon would say that they had a heartbeat but that was diminished when someone else would say he's losing too much blood. At 1:10 that afternoon, the doctors all became very quiet. One of them stepped over to us and told us that they were going to stop working on him because he was gone. We pleaded for them to keep trying but they said that all of the CPR had popped his heart and there was no hope. Then a doctor told us that "they stopped." Those were the two worst words that we've ever heard and at that moment we knew that life would never be the same again. Our Nathan Ryan was gone. His heart was broken and now ours was. It took them a few minutes to put him back together and then we were able to hold him. We were holding him but he wasn't there. We had to beg the doctors to take his breathing tube out and they told us that they needed permission from the Coroner. So Erik actually had to talk on the phone to the Coroner and after an hour or so, they took it out. We held him and kissed him and cried.


But the worst wasn't over. We still had to tell the kids what happened. We went to an empty room down the hall and one by one, they brought the kids in. We are supposed to protect them and now we had to tell them that their baby brother had died. They all cried and cried. It was devastating to see our kids in that much pain and there was nothing that we could do. Friends took the kids back to the playroom so that we could say goodbye to Nathan. We held him again and we asked our Pastor to dedicate him to God. The whole day was so surreal. A few hours ago they said that we could go home and now our son was dead. And the worst part about it was that we watched him die and there was nothing that we could do.

 ***The hospital won't admit anything but we strongly believe that they caused the blodclot when they took out his central line 18 hours prior.  We have done a lot of research and can't find any other explanation for our sweet boy to have such a large clot.  For some reason they didn't detect it ...until it was too late.