The PICU

12:45 am

You read right, it's the middle of the night and yet here I sit, typing a blog while I would normally be sleeping.  Not too far from me Bradley is sleeping pseudo peacefully in the crib.  Like any hospital room there is an array of machines that are in here for him, quite a few that he won't use this time an if there truly is a God that forgives me my sins as I believe; I pray he will never use or need.  For now they are monitoring how many times his heart beats, how many PVCs he has, how often he breathes, how often he shows an irregular heartbeat, if he suffers an episode of Apnea, and as always his Oxygen level.  There's his feeding machine whirring away as always because a little guy has to eat.  There's a machine that administers his medicine; the nurse pops a syringe in and a machine gives a perfectly timed dose of each one.  So high tech, so sophisticated...so complicated...so loud.  Everything beeps.  Everything has an alarm and they are loud so that the nurse sitting outside between the two patient rooms she is caring for can hear them.

Bradley is a rock star and sleeps through them of course, well for the most part...me I hear them all.  But I have been trained for this.  From the birth of my first child my ear has been tuned to the sound of a whimper from their rooms. From the moment they inserted an ugly button in my son's perfectly smooth tummy, I have been tuned to the slightest sound from him.  I wake at his change in breathing or too many turns in the crib; these can mean trouble for my little guy, so I hear them and I respond.  I don't have to respond here, but I sure hear them.

After too many hospital stays with Bradley, I know what most of these machines are and what they do; I truly wish I really didn't.  And though part of me longs for a return to the days when I was naive about the world of medicine; there is always the scholar in me too...the part of me that accepts the
knowledge as just part and parcel of something else for me to learn.  First hand experience has proven rough, but experience is learning and that I just have to accept as part of what makes me, me - I've always kept my brain tuned to learning something new...it's harder because he's my son, but his life has so much to teach me and if I don't pay attention I miss what He has to teach me while I am learning what life with Him has to teach me.   School's in session, time to pay attention.

In the midst of all these high tech machines monitoring everything about my son, there is an old fashioned clock on the wall.  It's a comfort in a way, something familiar.  These clocks have followed me throughout my life.  They let me know when it was almost time to get out of school, they helped me track contractions when I was having my children.  The clock in my room when I had Bradley delivered a steady ticking that I counted to help me turn off my head and let myself sleep.   Perhaps if all these machines weren't so loud I could hear the ticks and turn off my head in order to sleep now.  But you see, there is another clock in this room.  A large digital clock that reads all zeroes, and that one is keeping me awake.

The digital clock represents every aspect of the PICU that I don't ever want to experience.  That clock keeps account of precious moments in a child's life, every tiny second as a child struggles to stay here.  I've known those who have lost their baby, their child and my heart bled for them then, and feels them now as I see the clock that would tick away the seconds of a child's life.  My son's stay here is a precaution only, things that could have gone wrong and resulted in the employ of the rest of the machines in this room or any of others that could be rushed in - well those aren't things that have been necessary.  They weren't anticipated either.  We were a little surprised when he was wheeled into the PICU rather than the ward, but he is being watched like a hawk; we simply got lucky.  Lucky all day.

Bradley did great in his surgery.  No spasms in his bronchial, no trouble breathing as he woke from anesthesia, no nausea that was allowed to cause him discomfort.  Tonsils that were extra large in a small throat are gone, adenoids too.  Fluid off his ear and tubes in.  A good hearing test that revealed normal hearing.  And now he's sleeping almost peacefully.  A nurse that fell in love with him during the day and one at night....and doctors that have bent over backwards to make a connection with him and have not left without letting us know that Bradley is adorable.  So maybe there isn't a lot of sleep for me, but in the end - the digital clock is stopped and Bradley is healing as we speak...turns out it was actually a pretty good day after all!  And as long as we go home in the morning, then it will be considered a pretty good night too.