Wednesday, April 21, 2010

The single worst time of my life

I've been so dreading making this post for the longest time, but here we are guys! The single worst thing that has EVER happened.
I was still working at O' Charley's. BP and I had worked things out and he was raising Allison as his own which I appreciated a lot but still was the only one with a damn job.
Allison had a hard road from day one. When she was born she had a cyst over her eye that had to be removed. Then once I took her home she couldn't keep down her formula.
It was some of the craziest shit I think I've ever seen. I would give her a bottle and 10 minutes later she would turn into the exorcist. Have you ever seen a newborn projectile vomit 3 feet across the room. I am not exaggerating. I thought maybe she had an allergy so I took her to Reid to be checked out.
Things went pretty quick once they looked at her. Next thing you know we were on our way to Riley because she needed emergency surgery.
She had a congenital defect known as pyloric stenosis. There was a blockage at the bottom of her stomach which made digestion virtually impossible. So this poor thing was all of 3 weeks old and had already had 2 surgeries.
You would think that would be enough, huh? Well let me take a deep breath and tell you what happened when she was 10 months old....
I was waiting tables just like any other night. I was standing by the take out counter keying something into the computer when the phone rang and said the usual "Having a great day at O' Charleys" crap. Well it was Richmond police asking for ME! So I wigged out and said, "She's on break now." They asked that "she" return the call ASAP.
I hung up the phone and thought about it. Maybe I should return the call? Could be important, so I did.
They informed me that my daughter had had an accident and I needed to get to the hospital. I threw my money at BT my manager, jumped into my car, and peeled tight.
I arrived at Reid half having a nervous breakdown and was immediately taken to the security office.
My little girl had apparently drowned. My husband had supposedly left her in the tub for a minute to get a towel. She had slipped out of her tub seat, went under, and was blue and dead when BP found her.
He rushed her to the neighbor's and performed CPR and got her breathing again, but barely.
I was stuck in this office knowing my little girl was fighting for her life and I was being asked a thousand questions by the police and CPS. I had no answers I was at work! They finally let me back to see her after they saw they were about to have to arrest me or admit me to the psych ward otherwise.
She was so small and cold. Her breathing was so ragged it would break your heart. BP was standing over her crying his eyes out and apologizing. Do you really think I wanted to hear it? I literally growled and threw myself over her as I DARED him to even touch her!
They sent the mobile ICU from Riley to get her. She was hanging on by a thread. I drove behind the ambulance at about 100 mph all the way to Indy.
Things moved so fast it was a blur. I became a victim of "monitor fever" You see her lungs were badly damaged by the bathwater, so her oxygen intake was jacked, so I'd sit there staring at the levels dropping. Every time it went below 90% alarms would go off and all hell would break loose. Her lungs kept collapsing so they kept inserting chest tubes. They had her on a ventilator but it wasn't enough. She was dying right in front of me....
We had one last shot, a machine called an oscillator that gave her over a hundred breaths a minute. The doctors said not to hold out hope because 99.5% of cases like hers don't have happy endings.
Gonna leave it there for now as this post is killing me. Tune in tomorrow for how it turned out!
As always thanks for listening and God bless!

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