I Thought I was Going to Loose Him...

Hey y'all! It's been a while! The last few weeks brought us an eventful trip to Aripine, Az and Panguitch, Ut; 2 family reunions; a couple of trips to the hospital; our 10 year high school reunion; and several rounds of coughs, colds, diarrhea, stomach flue, etc. I have a lot I want to document, but I think it's gonna take me a day or two to get it all done. Thanks for your patience!

Tonight I'll start with what may have been the single scariest moment of my life:

We'd been at the Flake ranch in Arizona for 3 or 4 days. On Friday everyone went off on a hike. Sweety and I stayed behind, (Alone. Without a vehicle. 30 miles from the nearest tiny, little town) because we'd been hit with a truly brutal summer cold. I was looking forward to a good long soak, and a nap. But instead, Sweety and I bonded in a most terrifying way. Bleghh!

Not long after everyone left, I chatted with Sweety while he cruised the couch, and I was thinking it was time to get his blanket and lay him down for a nap. As these thoughts passed through my brain, Sweety fell and started to cry. No big deal, right?

As I reached to pick him up he began just sucking air, his little back was arched, his eyes had crossed and rolled up into his head, and then he quit breathing! Apparently his forehead landed directly on a lincoln log, and a nice bruise was already forming. After what seamed like YEARS he sucked in a couple of breaths. I waited for him to stabilize, but he started the whole freaky business all over again! This time he seized a little too! I was panicked!! I mean hyperventilating, shaking, freaking, panicked!!! (Is anyone surprised?)

I have had CPR and rescue breathing training. I've renewed recently in fact, but at that moment my brain was far too scrambled to make sense of the various steps that were running around and around in my head. One concern dominated my thoughts: if Sweety didn't begin to breathe on his own, how could anyone reach me in time to help!

I ran to call 911. (there had been some talk about getting rid of the ranch phone to save money; thank heaven we hadn't done it yet!) A little aside here: We've all heard those 911 calls where someone is just shouting pathetically into the phone, and you're just begging them to snap out of it, calm down, and relay some useful information.

Well I have total empathy now. That was me on the phone with the operator. She's attempting to verify my address, but the only words that would come out of my mouth were, "My baby's not BREATHING! MY BABY'S NOT BREATHING!" Thanks to God, while the operator was working with me, Sweety began to breathe again.

After some time passed Sweety stabilized. I decided to try and get him to the paramedics myself in order to avoid the back-breaking expense of having them come all the way out to us. However I faced a new problem. I needed to contact someone to come back and get us, but the ranch phone doesn't have long distance and cell-phones are awfully sketchy out there.

So I prayed. I explained the situation to Heavenly Father and begged for my phone to get reception. After that I absolutely knew where I needed to be to make my call. With Sweety still in my arms I walked outside to the crest of a hill just in front of the main cabin.

I had a whopping 4 bars. Seriously. Then the words came to my head, "Call Dave." I found out later that everyone else had turned their phones off. Dave was the only one with a phone I could reach at the time. I'm sure I would have tried him eventually, but I think my first choices would have been to call my parents and the people traveling in their car. This impression may have only saved 10 minutes or so, but we needed all the minutes we could gather. I was terribly afraid that Sweety was going to laps into another horrifying episode or something any second.

Dave was just on the other side of Heber, (the tiny, little town, next to the nearest tiny, little town) and started back as fast as he could. He offered to send his passengers with someone else but bless their hearts, they demanded that Dave head for us without further delay. I spent some time putting together a diaper bag for a possible hospital stay, and rounding up Sweety's car seat. (Thanks heaven my parents had taken it out of their van before they left!) After that Sweety started trying to fall asleep. It was all I could do to keep him awake while I waited.

Eventually I heard a truck motor. I started to get excited, but after checking the clock, I knew there was no way it could possibly be Dave yet. I resigned myself to more waiting, when Dave pulled up! Russ and Amanda hopped out, freeing up space for the car seat, consequently giving up their chance at action for the day, and Dave and Jaime rushed us to the paramedics in Overgaard. (the nearest tiny, little town) Keeping Sweety awake proved to be a challenge, but we made it.

Dave said he happened to glance at a clock at the fire station, and the estimate is that he made that whole trip in about half the time it would normally take. (Thank you, police, for not being out and about right then! Although come to think, they may have proved helpful in this particular situation.)

The paramedics put us in the ambulance and asked questions, and poked, and prodded, and asked more questions, and checked, and listened, and asked more questions, and tapped, and patted, and asked more questions until I was having trouble remembering my own name!

They kept 'double checking' my story by adding little twists and changes and asking if they had it right. At the time I was thinking, "Man! You guys must be special-ed. or something, because I just told you that completely different!" But looking back I wonder if they were trying to trip me up or find a hole in case I was lying to cover something up.

After the scrutiny concluded, they determined that Sweety was in no immediate danger, but he did need to be seen by a doctor. We went to the only clinic around, where the only p.a./ doctor was on vacation. So we took off for ShowLo, (a less tiny town, might even be a city) thirty or forty minutes away.

The clinic there checked us in, ran us through triage, and put us in a room. The doctor took one look at Sweety, announced they didn't have the facilities to deal with head injuries, and sent us to the emergency room. (When the paramedics in Overgaard had mentioned it, I was surprised to hear there was an ER!)



Ah, yes. The ShowLo ER. An entire blog post all its own. But here's the crux: I have developed a great appreciation for the comfort and familiarity of the ER here by my home! I'm sure it didn't help that at the time I was miserably sick, but come on! It took 3 hours for anyone to even ask us for money! And it was some time after that before we went into triage and got a room. Well... we got a piece, of a very large room, that was completely walled in by sheets. Do they think those sheets are magically germ-proof and sound-proof? (Someone should probably fill them in at some point)

With what must be my super-human ability to hear through hospital sheet walls, I found out that the guy to the left had been in a car wreck, and then I heard that the family on the right (mom, dad, little girl) had been in a wreck too, and you guessed it, it was the same wreck! I don't know what happened or who was at fault, but I was thinking our stay might have been more interesting if they had been next to each other, tee, hee! The sad part was that it was the wedding day of the family on the right. (So much for patient confidentiality, but who wants that in an ER anyway, right?)

As it turns out, Sweety's episode was not at all serious. Thanks again to God. It was classic breath-holding, something that baby's do in response to extreme stress and/or pain. (I'd never heard of this, but now it seems like everyone I know has a child or nephew or pet that does/did it) Their little brains get overloaded and start loosing track of all that they're supposed to be doing.

And while it was absolutely horrifying to watch, the good news is its apparently completely harmless. They always begin breathing again within a few minutes, and there are no documented cases of lasting brain injury or anything like that. It's supposed to wear off by age two-ish when the brain is mature enough to realize that breathing acctually has to be a priority, regardless of what else is going on.

And so ends my adventure with Sweety. We're more grateful than ever to have him and his darling brother in our lives. And you should hear the message on my phone, from Ben, while he was stuck at home, going a little crazy waiting for info, and contemplating a lightning fast drive to Az. The love, the care, and desire to do anything of use, dripping out of his voice pushes me near tears each time I replay it. He usually plays the comforter, the rock to my freak-out, but hearing vulnerability from him in that moment, somehow shows the depth of his love for our little boy. I have the most amazing husband. He'd do anything for us. Thanks Ben.

Man this is a long post! I'm sorry I got a little carried away, but I so enjoy writing to you! Thanks for giving me a minute... or twelve!