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Dylan Michael
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When I was about 20 weeks pregnant I went for my first sonogram. I found out I was having my second son. The sonogram was exceptionally long. It took about 3 hours then they sent me home. The next morning the doctor called me and told me that they had trouble locating parts of Dylan's heart. I saw alot of different doctors while I was pregnant and they all decided he should be born at University Of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, Va. Its almost 2 hours from where I live. When I was about 34 weeks along I started going into pre-term labor which they were able to control. One night his heart rate dropped really low so they decided to send me to UVA in the ambulance. When we got there they were planning on doing a C-section that day. I stayed in the hospital there about 24 hours on monitors and the doctors decided he would be ok to say in a little while longer, so they sent me to the Ronald McDonald house (which was a block from the hospital) to stay until he was born. I stayed there for 3 weeks then they did the C-section. Dylan was born at 2:14 pm August 31, 2004. He seemed to be a pretty healthy baby, however he did have the heart defect. A few hours after birth they realized he also had a Treacheal Esophigeal Fistula. His stomach didnt meet his esophigus. The next day they did some tests to find out what heart defect he had which turned out to be Tetrology of Fallot. Its a congenital heart disease with 4 different deffects. When he was about a week old they determined he had VACTERAL Associates. Each letter stands for a different defect in his body. Give or take a few letters. When Dylan was 8 days old he had his first open heart surgery. That went really well. They put in a temporary shunt until his body was stronger and he was a little bit older and in good enough shape to handle the full repair of the heart. A few hours after the heart surgery his shunt clotted and we almost lost him then but thankfully they were able to get in there and clear it out just in the nick of time. Two weeks after the heart surgery the doctors decided it was time for the next surgery, the Fistula repair. They told me it was going to be a quick, easy, low risk surgery. I asked if it would effect his heart.. maybe give him a heart attack or a stroke and they told me "no". What they should have said was "I dont know".
They called me from the OR right after the first insision was made and said everything was going very well and they would call me back in an hour that if she was a few minutes late not to worry. The next hour rolled around and there wasnt a call so I waited and waited. Finally someone came to tell me that Dylan's heart had quit pumping blood to his lungs so they had to put him on a pacemaker. They didnt tell me the whole truth.. They didnt tell me he died on the table and they had to bring him back. It happened twice that day. Dylan went into surgery at 12 in the afternoon and was pretty much a healty baby, and came out 10:00 pm a very sick baby. He was on a ventilator, pacemaker, and heart- lung bypass.. My little baby was on full life support. All of the surgeons that were in the operating room that day gave me different stories about what really happend to Dylan. They were trying to tell me what I needed to know, what I wanted to hear, and what they had to say to cover each others stories. Dylan lived on life support for 48 hours. His kidneys and liver failed so then I was told there was nothing else they could do. He has no chance of living and it was time to cut the life support off and I had to start making his funeral arrangements while we waited on the rest of the family to get there. When it was time to turn the pump off we all crowed in the room with him. It took him about 2 minute to die. He died at 3:35 pm September 26. 2004. We brought him home and burried him 2 days later. We had a good 3 1/2 weeks together! 
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