5) The PICU

After an hour (maybe… who really knows… time didn’t feel normal for a while) we were allowed to go back to Weston’s room. I tried to use every hospital TV show trauma situation to mentally prepare myself for what he was going to look like, and while the tubes and machines all looked similar, seeing your baby there does not. Walking into that room for the first time was one of the hardest things that I had to do at that hospital. He was lying there on the bed and just looked like he was sleeping. Peaceful.

The doctors were running every test that they could – we knew there was going to be damage. We didn’t know how much and with the swelling that was occurring in his brain from the lack of oxygen, it would take some time to see. I am a planner - I need to know everything, regardless of the difficulty or the detail, because I need to prepare myself and make a plan, but doctors do not like to give any details of anything until they have all the facts. This was difficult… I knew that they must have some idea of the likely outcome but didn’t want to tell me because medical tests did not support it yet. Thank goodness Amy was there to give me the realistic side of the situation… the realistic conclusion that our little boy was not there anymore and should he ever wake up, that would be all that he would ever do.

Based on the medical tests, Weston was without a heartbeat for at least 40 minutes; that they got it back, in itself, is a miracle. The different tests that they ran were coming back good – x-rays showed no broken bones or damage; labs were coming back relatively normal for his situation; he was starting to breathe over the ventilator; and all of this gave us hope. That first night was the biggest hurdle. We were told that the first step was him making it through the night, and we woke up (a hundred times during the night) the next morning to his sweet face. First hurdle passed.

The back of my mind never let me forget the inevitable outcome, but all of the good news created a roller coaster. My mind raced back and forth between what my gut was telling me and the miracle my heart hoped all of the good news would create. I spent hours Googling outcomes of cases similar to this, and for the most part the outcomes were horrible nightmares, but there was one little boy who went home and had a normal life. So I prayed for a miracle.

Weston was so strong through this whole ordeal; he was breathing over the ventilator, and his organs were working hard; they took him off of a lot of the medications. All of this just wasn’t enough to overcome the damage that had been done to his brain. On the second day, they were able to start doing the brain tests which were not coming back good. All Weston was able to do was breathe intermittently on his own – nothing else was there anymore and that was the moment that I knew that we had to let him go.

Our families took over the PICU for two days. We shoved more people into his room than I’m sure the fire department would approve of. The first night I told Chris that I wanted us to be strong and be happy. If some part of his little brain could hear us, I wanted him to know that we loved him and I wanted him to hear laughter. So Chris and I put on our brave faces and took every bit of strength that we had and we smiled. We told stories and laughed with our families and brought as much joy into that room as we possibly could. Every person that wanted to be there to see Weston was there; our siblings hopped in a plane and into their cars and covered hundreds of miles to see him. His room was overflowing with love.

Our miracle wasn’t going to be that we took our little boy home; our miracle was going to be that he brought such joy to everyone’s life and that he gave us enough time so that we could all say goodbye. 

Lesson #2