Uzziel (Part 2)
Continued from previous post; if you haven't read part one, scroll down.
As I walked into the PICU, it seemed like an entirely different place; babies were crying endlessly, faces were smile-less and sad, despite Christmas being 4 days away, and there was tension in the air. After garbing myself with a gown, gloves, and a mask, I stepped into Uzzie's room where it was completely silent. My mom, dad, and sister were sitting around his bed, and Uzzie was lying there using every single ounce of energy that he had just to inhale his next breath. I knew it was a stupid question to ask, but I looked at him and said,
"Hey buddy, how ya feelin'?"
And, as always, his reply was, "I'm ok."
Once again, the room grew silent except for the constant beep sounding from the heart monitor. I stepped out of the room to have a nurse explain to me what all of the #s and such were monitoring so I would at least have some sort of an idea of what I was staring at. She explained that the most important # at that time was in white, which told us the # of breaths Uzzie was taking per minute.
"An average person takes 10-15 breaths per minute and right now, Uzzie is taking 40," she explained. She told me that if his breathing got up to around 50 that they would suggest putting him on the respirator.
I asked, "How long would he have to stay on the respirator?"
She told me that probably 90% of their patients in Uzzie's situation do not come off of the respirator alive. So...I thought to myself, well, at least we have a 10% chance of walking out of this hospital together. After putting my mask back on, I re-entered the room, and the white # had gone up to 43. He still had a cough, and the nurse would come in every hour to give him a breathing treatment. He got to where it would choke him, and he would spit up....and before long, the clear spit began turning red. This was our first signal that his lungs were basically drowning in blood, and that's why he couldn't breathe. By 3:00 am, my dad and sister had gone home with the babies, and my mom and I stayed with Uzzie and his biological mom, Yvonne. Everyone was worn out and emotionally drained, but we couldn't shut our eyes for even one minute of rest. His breathing just kept getting heavier and heavier, and his body was completely shutting down. At around 6 am, he looked at me and said,
"Sarah, I need some help. I'm tired."
I knew that was the moment we had all been dreading, and we all had hoped this time wouldn't come for him, but it was here. And I had to get him help.
"You've put up a good fight Uzzie, and you have to keep going. I am going to tell the nurse you want the respirator to help you breathe. Do you want to stay conscious, or do you want them to let you sleep?"
"I need rest," he responded. "Put me to sleep."
And so I told the nurse; she called the doctor, and the doctor came in to explain everything to us. His mom doesn't understand much English so I was translating everything for her.
"Make sure she knows this is probably her last time to ever see him awake or to ever talk to him again," the doctor said.
When she heard this, she sat next to him on his bed, she wrapped herself around him, and sobbed. It was the saddest thing I had ever seen in my life. And do you know, he didn't shed one tear; he didn't mumble one complaint; he didn't even have a sad look on his face. He simply sat up in bed, put his legs over the edge, and pulled his mom's head down onto his shoulders.
"Mom, don't cry. I am going to be okay, and I love you."
That had to be one of the most encouraging and courageous acts of love I will ever see. His life was over; his mom was losing her boy...her whole life...her reason for being; he was fighting for every single breath of life, and yet HE was consoling his mother.
They ordered to leave the room around 8 am. We were told it would take approximately 45 minutes to an hour to get him on the respirator and sedate him. Well, 2 hours later, we still hadn't heard anything. So I sent my boyfriend (at that time), who was a police officer, to see what was causing the hold-up. Apparently, when they put the tube down into his lungs, blood came spewing out, and it was more than they had expected and so the tube wouldn't even go in. Finally, 2 hours later, we were given permission to go back into the room. I walked in to the worst memory of this whole experience--Uzzie was laying there with his eyes all gooped up (they put this vaseline-like stuff in his eyes since he was in an induced coma and couldn't blink), this huge machine above his head with a long tube going into his mouth, and there was tape around his mouth and up under his nose to hold the tube in place. It was all bloody; his sheets were bloody, his arms were bloody, the floor under his bed was bloody. And that's when I lost it. I burst out crying and didn't stop for a good hour.
I was angry. Why did HE have to go through this? Why did HE have to be sick? Why couldn't we just have a "normal" Christmas? And suddenly, I heard crying in the next room over, only to find out later that a single mother had lost her 9 month old baby. She had no family, and what she did have was taken from her. She had no hope left. Then I remembered,
"We still have a 10% chance."
Well the day went on, and I know it was the loooooongest day of my life. By the time evening came, I had to leave the room because I couldn't stand to watch him in such a lifeless state. When I got into the hallway, I heard some carolers coming by, and they asked me if they could sing to Uzzie. I gladly told them yes, and they sang several songs to him from the hallway. As I looked around the corner, I saw my mom and Uzzie's mom standing together with tears pouring down their faces. This was certainly not a typical "hustle-and-bustle-let's-go-last-minute-Christmas-shopping" week for us. And as the carolers stopped singing, 2 young men asked me if they could go see Uzzie, so I gave them both masks and walked in with them. They asked permission to pray for him, laid hands on him, and immediately started praying. At that moment, I knew that I immediately had to get prayer going for him. So I asked those guys to put him on their prayer list at whatever church they went to; I called my own pastor and asked him to get our prayer chain started; I got online from the kiddie korner in the hospital, and I told all of my chat buddies to pray...I had friends praying for him everywhere and calling churches to have him put on prayer lists: Washington, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Arkansas, Virginia, New York, even England! And even the people who weren't "believers" said, "We'll keep Uzzie in our thoughts and prayers."
Monday morning, December 23rd, the doctor asked to speak with Yvonne and me. He took us back to this little private room and said,
"Uzzie's kidneys are starting to shut down. We need to start dialysis to get his kidneys working again, but if we do that, it's going to overwork his heart, and he will have a heart attack. I do not suggest that you start dialysis, but it's up to you. If you choose NOT to, he will live about 2 more hours. And I want you to sign the Do Not Resuscitate form because if he flatlines, and we have to shock him to bring him back, blood is going to gush out of every single hole in his body; his eyes, his ears, his nose, etc...So think about this and let me know what you want us to do."
After telling Yvonne everything in Spanish, she looked at the doctor and very plainly said in English,
"No. I want you to do everything possible to help my son stay alive."
And so he said, "Okay, we will start dialysis in the morning if he makes it thru the night. For now, here is a funeral home with cheap expenses that you might want to call and make arrangements."
After going back and telling my parents about this, we were all very upset, as we didn't want his mom to have them resuscitate Uzzie if he happened to flatline. The nurse had just turned up the knob on the respirator to its maximum level; it was now breathing for Uzzie 100%. But, everything was out of our hands. We were all standing there looking at him lying in this bed, his eyes had finally closed, and there wasn't one single thing we could do about it. Our only job left to do was to pray, pray, and pray some more. And that's exactly what we did. I got back on the phone and called everyone I knew and told them to call people to pray, and have them call people they knew to pray, and so on...
On Tuesday morning, the nurse came in and told me a lady was there to see Uzzie and wanted to know if I would give her permission to enter the room. (At this time, all visitors could only visit with family members in the waiting room; nobody could come see Uzzie.) I told the lady I appreciated her coming, but we couldn't allow any visitors inside.
She said, "Ma'am, please. I want to pray for him. I heard about him on the radio, and I don't know him, but I wanted to come pray for him."
I couldn't believe it; I told her to go put all the garb on, and she could go inside the room...and she did. She prayed, and when she left, someone else came in. And when that person left, someone else came in. All these people had heard about him and simply wanted to pray for him. How could I possibly turn down the handiwork of God, when He was simply being faithful to me and answering my prayers? And so all day Tuesday, visitors streamed in and out of the room. It was a Christmas Eve I will never forget. And amazingly enough, Uzzie didn't get any worse. He stayed the same, and by 10 pm, his kidneys had started to function again on their own. There was no more need for dialysis!
Christmas morning was here, and we were still praying for a miracle. I was soooo tired from not sleeping for 4 days, and I have no clue how I was possibly still standing. People had brought food and gifts to us, and it was a nice day, but we certainly would have rather been at home. Anyway, we decided to let everyone have a break and go home to get away from the white walls and the hospital smell. I told my parents and Yvonne to go first so they could all get refreshed, and then I would go home later. While they were gone, it was just me and Uzzie. And so I pulled a chair up next to his bed. I held his hand, and I started singing
Jesus loves me this I know
For the Bible tells me so
Little ones to Him belong
They are weak but He is strong...
I was looking toward his feet, and I saw his toes twitch. Finding that a little odd, I turned my head to look at his face, and his eyes were open! It scared me to death, and I threw his hand down and ran out of the room. I went to the nurse's station and said,
"Hey! Are his eyes suppose to be open?"
"No," she said, "he is in an induced coma, hun."
"Well he's not anymore. He's awake!"
Looking at me with disbelief, she followed me back into the room, and sure enough, he was blinking. She told me to hold his hand, and so I did.
"Uzzie, if you can hear me, squeeze Sarah's hand."
And he squeezed it--hard.
I was so excited, I couldn't stand it. I called everyone to tell them the good news. He wasn't anywhere near being up and walking, but he certainly was full of life, contrary to what the doctors had predicted 2 days beforehand.
As the doctor entered the room with the nurse, he shook his head and said, "I don't know. I've never seen anything like this, and I have no explaination for it."
Maybe he didn't have an explaination, but I did. It was the power of prayer. God had answered our prayers, and He gave us the best Christmas gift we could ever ask for: a miracle.
All of this happened on Wednesday, and by the following Monday, Uzzie was taken off of the respirator, and he was eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches lol. We got to move out of ICU on Wednesday; we celebrated New Year's in Pediatrics, and by January 3rd, we were all walking out of the hospital together.
I couldn't wait long after getting home to start asking Uzzie questions.
"Do you remember hearing or seeing anything while you were sleeping?"
And he answered,
"It's really weird. I remember hearing singing, it was like angels or something. And I remember seeing like all these doctors around me, but they were all dressed in really really bright white. And I felt safe. I felt like everything was perfect, and I wasn't scared or afraid. I felt really peaceful."
Now we know that the singing he heard was probably the carolers....or angels...and the doctors dressed in really bright white were probably....who knows lol...but one thing we do know is that there is a God who loves us, and prayer is the key of our morning and the lock of our night. :)
~Happy 16th Birthday, Uzziel. I love you!!
As I walked into the PICU, it seemed like an entirely different place; babies were crying endlessly, faces were smile-less and sad, despite Christmas being 4 days away, and there was tension in the air. After garbing myself with a gown, gloves, and a mask, I stepped into Uzzie's room where it was completely silent. My mom, dad, and sister were sitting around his bed, and Uzzie was lying there using every single ounce of energy that he had just to inhale his next breath. I knew it was a stupid question to ask, but I looked at him and said,
"Hey buddy, how ya feelin'?"
And, as always, his reply was, "I'm ok."
Once again, the room grew silent except for the constant beep sounding from the heart monitor. I stepped out of the room to have a nurse explain to me what all of the #s and such were monitoring so I would at least have some sort of an idea of what I was staring at. She explained that the most important # at that time was in white, which told us the # of breaths Uzzie was taking per minute.
"An average person takes 10-15 breaths per minute and right now, Uzzie is taking 40," she explained. She told me that if his breathing got up to around 50 that they would suggest putting him on the respirator.
I asked, "How long would he have to stay on the respirator?"
She told me that probably 90% of their patients in Uzzie's situation do not come off of the respirator alive. So...I thought to myself, well, at least we have a 10% chance of walking out of this hospital together. After putting my mask back on, I re-entered the room, and the white # had gone up to 43. He still had a cough, and the nurse would come in every hour to give him a breathing treatment. He got to where it would choke him, and he would spit up....and before long, the clear spit began turning red. This was our first signal that his lungs were basically drowning in blood, and that's why he couldn't breathe. By 3:00 am, my dad and sister had gone home with the babies, and my mom and I stayed with Uzzie and his biological mom, Yvonne. Everyone was worn out and emotionally drained, but we couldn't shut our eyes for even one minute of rest. His breathing just kept getting heavier and heavier, and his body was completely shutting down. At around 6 am, he looked at me and said,
"Sarah, I need some help. I'm tired."
I knew that was the moment we had all been dreading, and we all had hoped this time wouldn't come for him, but it was here. And I had to get him help.
"You've put up a good fight Uzzie, and you have to keep going. I am going to tell the nurse you want the respirator to help you breathe. Do you want to stay conscious, or do you want them to let you sleep?"
"I need rest," he responded. "Put me to sleep."
And so I told the nurse; she called the doctor, and the doctor came in to explain everything to us. His mom doesn't understand much English so I was translating everything for her.
"Make sure she knows this is probably her last time to ever see him awake or to ever talk to him again," the doctor said.
When she heard this, she sat next to him on his bed, she wrapped herself around him, and sobbed. It was the saddest thing I had ever seen in my life. And do you know, he didn't shed one tear; he didn't mumble one complaint; he didn't even have a sad look on his face. He simply sat up in bed, put his legs over the edge, and pulled his mom's head down onto his shoulders.
"Mom, don't cry. I am going to be okay, and I love you."
That had to be one of the most encouraging and courageous acts of love I will ever see. His life was over; his mom was losing her boy...her whole life...her reason for being; he was fighting for every single breath of life, and yet HE was consoling his mother.
They ordered to leave the room around 8 am. We were told it would take approximately 45 minutes to an hour to get him on the respirator and sedate him. Well, 2 hours later, we still hadn't heard anything. So I sent my boyfriend (at that time), who was a police officer, to see what was causing the hold-up. Apparently, when they put the tube down into his lungs, blood came spewing out, and it was more than they had expected and so the tube wouldn't even go in. Finally, 2 hours later, we were given permission to go back into the room. I walked in to the worst memory of this whole experience--Uzzie was laying there with his eyes all gooped up (they put this vaseline-like stuff in his eyes since he was in an induced coma and couldn't blink), this huge machine above his head with a long tube going into his mouth, and there was tape around his mouth and up under his nose to hold the tube in place. It was all bloody; his sheets were bloody, his arms were bloody, the floor under his bed was bloody. And that's when I lost it. I burst out crying and didn't stop for a good hour.
I was angry. Why did HE have to go through this? Why did HE have to be sick? Why couldn't we just have a "normal" Christmas? And suddenly, I heard crying in the next room over, only to find out later that a single mother had lost her 9 month old baby. She had no family, and what she did have was taken from her. She had no hope left. Then I remembered,
"We still have a 10% chance."
Well the day went on, and I know it was the loooooongest day of my life. By the time evening came, I had to leave the room because I couldn't stand to watch him in such a lifeless state. When I got into the hallway, I heard some carolers coming by, and they asked me if they could sing to Uzzie. I gladly told them yes, and they sang several songs to him from the hallway. As I looked around the corner, I saw my mom and Uzzie's mom standing together with tears pouring down their faces. This was certainly not a typical "hustle-and-bustle-let's-go-last-minute-Christmas-shopping" week for us. And as the carolers stopped singing, 2 young men asked me if they could go see Uzzie, so I gave them both masks and walked in with them. They asked permission to pray for him, laid hands on him, and immediately started praying. At that moment, I knew that I immediately had to get prayer going for him. So I asked those guys to put him on their prayer list at whatever church they went to; I called my own pastor and asked him to get our prayer chain started; I got online from the kiddie korner in the hospital, and I told all of my chat buddies to pray...I had friends praying for him everywhere and calling churches to have him put on prayer lists: Washington, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Arkansas, Virginia, New York, even England! And even the people who weren't "believers" said, "We'll keep Uzzie in our thoughts and prayers."
Monday morning, December 23rd, the doctor asked to speak with Yvonne and me. He took us back to this little private room and said,
"Uzzie's kidneys are starting to shut down. We need to start dialysis to get his kidneys working again, but if we do that, it's going to overwork his heart, and he will have a heart attack. I do not suggest that you start dialysis, but it's up to you. If you choose NOT to, he will live about 2 more hours. And I want you to sign the Do Not Resuscitate form because if he flatlines, and we have to shock him to bring him back, blood is going to gush out of every single hole in his body; his eyes, his ears, his nose, etc...So think about this and let me know what you want us to do."
After telling Yvonne everything in Spanish, she looked at the doctor and very plainly said in English,
"No. I want you to do everything possible to help my son stay alive."
And so he said, "Okay, we will start dialysis in the morning if he makes it thru the night. For now, here is a funeral home with cheap expenses that you might want to call and make arrangements."
After going back and telling my parents about this, we were all very upset, as we didn't want his mom to have them resuscitate Uzzie if he happened to flatline. The nurse had just turned up the knob on the respirator to its maximum level; it was now breathing for Uzzie 100%. But, everything was out of our hands. We were all standing there looking at him lying in this bed, his eyes had finally closed, and there wasn't one single thing we could do about it. Our only job left to do was to pray, pray, and pray some more. And that's exactly what we did. I got back on the phone and called everyone I knew and told them to call people to pray, and have them call people they knew to pray, and so on...
On Tuesday morning, the nurse came in and told me a lady was there to see Uzzie and wanted to know if I would give her permission to enter the room. (At this time, all visitors could only visit with family members in the waiting room; nobody could come see Uzzie.) I told the lady I appreciated her coming, but we couldn't allow any visitors inside.
She said, "Ma'am, please. I want to pray for him. I heard about him on the radio, and I don't know him, but I wanted to come pray for him."
I couldn't believe it; I told her to go put all the garb on, and she could go inside the room...and she did. She prayed, and when she left, someone else came in. And when that person left, someone else came in. All these people had heard about him and simply wanted to pray for him. How could I possibly turn down the handiwork of God, when He was simply being faithful to me and answering my prayers? And so all day Tuesday, visitors streamed in and out of the room. It was a Christmas Eve I will never forget. And amazingly enough, Uzzie didn't get any worse. He stayed the same, and by 10 pm, his kidneys had started to function again on their own. There was no more need for dialysis!
Christmas morning was here, and we were still praying for a miracle. I was soooo tired from not sleeping for 4 days, and I have no clue how I was possibly still standing. People had brought food and gifts to us, and it was a nice day, but we certainly would have rather been at home. Anyway, we decided to let everyone have a break and go home to get away from the white walls and the hospital smell. I told my parents and Yvonne to go first so they could all get refreshed, and then I would go home later. While they were gone, it was just me and Uzzie. And so I pulled a chair up next to his bed. I held his hand, and I started singing
Jesus loves me this I know
For the Bible tells me so
Little ones to Him belong
They are weak but He is strong...
I was looking toward his feet, and I saw his toes twitch. Finding that a little odd, I turned my head to look at his face, and his eyes were open! It scared me to death, and I threw his hand down and ran out of the room. I went to the nurse's station and said,
"Hey! Are his eyes suppose to be open?"
"No," she said, "he is in an induced coma, hun."
"Well he's not anymore. He's awake!"
Looking at me with disbelief, she followed me back into the room, and sure enough, he was blinking. She told me to hold his hand, and so I did.
"Uzzie, if you can hear me, squeeze Sarah's hand."
And he squeezed it--hard.
I was so excited, I couldn't stand it. I called everyone to tell them the good news. He wasn't anywhere near being up and walking, but he certainly was full of life, contrary to what the doctors had predicted 2 days beforehand.
As the doctor entered the room with the nurse, he shook his head and said, "I don't know. I've never seen anything like this, and I have no explaination for it."
Maybe he didn't have an explaination, but I did. It was the power of prayer. God had answered our prayers, and He gave us the best Christmas gift we could ever ask for: a miracle.
All of this happened on Wednesday, and by the following Monday, Uzzie was taken off of the respirator, and he was eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches lol. We got to move out of ICU on Wednesday; we celebrated New Year's in Pediatrics, and by January 3rd, we were all walking out of the hospital together.
I couldn't wait long after getting home to start asking Uzzie questions.
"Do you remember hearing or seeing anything while you were sleeping?"
And he answered,
"It's really weird. I remember hearing singing, it was like angels or something. And I remember seeing like all these doctors around me, but they were all dressed in really really bright white. And I felt safe. I felt like everything was perfect, and I wasn't scared or afraid. I felt really peaceful."
Now we know that the singing he heard was probably the carolers....or angels...and the doctors dressed in really bright white were probably....who knows lol...but one thing we do know is that there is a God who loves us, and prayer is the key of our morning and the lock of our night. :)
~Happy 16th Birthday, Uzziel. I love you!!
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