In Memory

I wrote this to read at his memorial service but I never was able to do so:

               I was sure he was a boy at eleven weeks, but had asked if he was a girl, if his name could still be Atticus. My father, my brother, and my son were all born the year of the rabbit, twenty-four years apart each. We believed in no special significance to it, but it was a fun observation to make. He was born on Easter, at 2 p.m., which was when we were supposed to be having lunch with the family. In the Western Zodiac, he was a Taurus, the ox, just like his sister, and also just like his sister he was stubborn and decided that he wanted to stay breech. A symbol of Easter, the Easter Lily, holds significance because his sister’s middle name is Lily.

                He was a strong boy; he held his head up before we left the hospital; he could stand gripping the rails of the crib at four months, and he was getting up on all fours attempting to crawl before five months, although he never did crawl. He and his sister loved each other. She always wanted to help with him and he always wanted to know where she was. He would fuss, wanting to know where his sister was and at times, she would bring him the exact toy he wanted to appease him when he cried.

                He was a good eater, a great sleeper - but only when daddy put him down for a nap - and everyone loved him and was charmed by his beautiful, big brown eyes. He was such a momma’s boy, but I would be the last to complain. A mother finds it hard to accept that her child is in a better place, because she knows that in her arms is the safest.

                He was more prone to smiling than to fussing, although he could be particular. He liked to get kisses and be held by everyone, including his sister that would demand it. If he had to be set down, he wanted to be able to see everyone. He was and is so loved, my precious little man.

What Happened to Atticus

On Sunday, November 13, Atticus was found not breathing during a nap by Jarred.  I started CPR as we called 911.  While I continued CPR (and later in the emergency room) it was discovered that he had baby food in his lungs.  They were unable to get him breathing or find a pulse until after he’d arrived in the emergency room.  Once they were able to stabilize him, they sent him via helicopter to the Children’s Hospital.  Although they were able to get him breathing with the use of a ventilator, he was never responsive.

Sunday night, they were able to get him stable, and he even started breathing over the ventilator (it was not breathing that would have sustained life, but it did show brain activity).  Upon arrival to the Children’s Hospital, he was given a CT scan (which came back with normal results) and Sunday night they put him on an EEG (which showed normal brain activity).  We were asked if we wanted to put him in a study, and we consented, so his body temperature was lowered.  It had been shown in animals, newborns and adults that lowering body temperature after a cardiac arrest within six hours of the cardiac arrest improves the brain’s chances of recovering.  Even though it was not optimistic that he was unresponsive, it is to be expected when one is hypothermic.

He made it through Monday stable and breathing with more regularity and they actually lowered the dosage of some of the medications they had him on.   We got the good news that his kidneys were functioning very well.  At 6 pm on Monday, his heart needed more medication to continue working (and if they stopped his medications, his heart would stop) and they discovered that his liver had started failing.

Early Tuesday morning, we had them take him out of the study, so they began to increase his body temperature.  We wanted them to be able to conduct organ function tests and what is called a ‘brain dead’ test, which looks for brain function.  For infants, two tests have to be conducted 24 hours apart for them to be considered brain dead.  As the night progressed, he started getting worse and so we weren’t even going to have them perform the tests, but one of the doctors wanted to conduct at least one of the tests just to see if there had been any improvement since admission.
We asked Tuesday morning if he would be eligible to be an organ donor.  Since he was not well enough to make it to both of the brain function tests, he was only eligible to be a kidney donor, since other organ donations require a brain death and for kidneys, only a circulatory death is necessary.  He would not have been considered brain dead during the first test because he was still breathing over the ventilator and although it was a function of the brain stem and not a higher brain function, it still showed his brain was functioning at some level.

So we started the process for organ donation.  However, as Tuesday went by, they determined that they didn’t want to attempt the recovery on him.  He was not doing well, and they were worried that even if they were able to recover the kidneys, that they would be unable to donate them.

A little before 5 pm, on Tuesday, November 15, we had him taken off the ventilator and he was placed in my arms.  At 5 pm, he passed peacefully and the doctor came in to call his death at 5:10 pm.

It may seem like he had progressively gotten worse during his stay at the hospital, but that isn’t exactly true.  When the body suffers a period of time without oxygen, the organs don’t begin to show the true damage until 2-3 days after the cardiac arrest.  This was damage that had already occurred on Sunday, but it was just beginning to show.  The CT scan that had come back normal was the same story: it wouldn’t have shown anything beyond any damage that would have been before the cardiac arrest.

They are ruling it SIDS because they do not know why all of this happened.  That is not the official cause of death until the toxicology reports come back from his autopsy, but as they were unable to find any infections when he was admitted into the hospital, it’s unlikely this will be changed.  They could not find any defects that would have caused this.  That is the nature of SIDS; yes, we know he stopped breathing, we know that he aspirated and his heart stopped, but we don’t know why it happened and we probably never will.