A mother's intuition

As I had mentioned before, my now 4 month old son has a heart condition Tetralogy of Fallot, and will need to have open heart surgery. I won’t bore you with the details, but we spent all day Wednesday in the hospital doing tests. At the end of a 12 hour stay at the hospital, the Doctor after reading some of the results considered admitting our son over night. This was NEVER supposed to be an overnight event. We were suppose to go in at 6:00 a.m. start testing at 8:00 a.m. and leave around 5 or 6 p.m. but my little chunky baby decided to hide his veins under a few rolls of sweet baby chub, creating a problem for the anesthesiologist. ( He needed to be put to sleep for the test. ) After poking every “ thin “ area of his body, they ended up putting the IV in the bottom of his left foot. Part of the “monitoring” was a test that revealed his oxygen saturation levels. They are normally 100% for a healthy person. Normal for someone with Tetralogy of Fallot is in the 70 – 80 range (before surgery); lower than that and it becomes a serious concern. After the test while being monitored his saturation levels fell to the 50 range. He was even being given oxygen at the time. Serious Concern. This condition is also known as “Blue Baby Syndrome”, the lack of oxygen in the blood, causes the person to become blue. The lower the saturation levels the bluer they look. When my son’s levels were registering in the 50’s he looked the same pinkish color that he always did when feeling well. He acted in the same manner that he always did and otherwise seemed fine. But his numbers were not fine. The Dr. was concerned. He wanted to keep him overnight and wait until his levels rose into the 70 range while not having the assistance of oxygen. By this time of night, we were all exhausted. We just wanted to go home and rest as well as ingest all of the information that we had received that day. I had not slept the night before and I will be honest in saying that I was possibly not making complete sentences by this time. God did however give me the clarity to communicate in an effective manner what I was feeling inside.
I told my husband that I did not care what the monitor was saying. This is normal for my son. This is as good as it gets. This is the best color that he gets. This is the best he acts (lower numbers means less oxygen, which means more lethargic). If they do not feel comfortable sending him home in this condition, then they are going to have to keep him and perform his surgery today, because this is as good as it gets. The more I said it out loud, the more I knew it to be true. Even though the numbers and my opinion conflicted each other the Dr. did decide to give it a couple more hours before officially omitting us. So we waited and prayed. Every couple of sections his number would flash across the screen. 52. . .53. . .55. . .52. . . 52 . . .52 Eeeerrrggggg. Come On! I know this isn’t right! So finally our wonderful nurse, truly. Took the reader from his finger and placed it on his toe, hoping that I was right, and that something was wrong with the machine. We held our breath. . . .52. . . . 53. . . .53. . . .52. NO! The Dr. was due any minute and we were going to have to stay. Now, you may be saying, “what’s the big deal lady? It’s just one night.” But no, it wouldn’t be because as I said, this was as good as it was going to get for him, and secondly when he has open heart surgery in about a month we will be in the hospital for over a week. I didn’t want to start that now. Especially without being prepared. So as my son’s bedtime approached we tried to settle him down in a strange environment while working around several wires and sore incision spots. As I was rocking him in a chair that did not rock something happened, I promise I didn’t do it on purpose, but his IV came out of his foot and there was blood everywhere! Yes, it was scary. The reason that he was being monitor in the first place was to make sure that the artery that they preformed the catheter in would not reopen and cause him to loose all his blood.
Anyway, we cleaned him up, realizing that it was only the IV. In doing so, all wires were removed and a new oxygen saturation monitoring device was attached to his toe. . . . 70. . .75. . . 76. . .77. . .75. .. 76. . . YES! We’re goin’ home! Hubby and I did a happy dance with chubby baby. Dr. walked in shortly after. “So you want to go home?” Or bags were already packed. “Thank you very much Dr. , see you tomorrow. Bye.” Thank you Jesus! Finally the end to a VERY long day.
Baby slept like a log all night. So did I.
Remember, you are the parents. You know your children. And computers are not always smarter than you.
Now go kiss your babies and thank God for them.