Ours began Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 8:46 am. I'll never forget EVERY.SINGLE.SECOND. of that morning. I've been going to the same Doctor for many years so when he walked into the room, I immediately knew from his demeanor that something was wrong. We left the office in a fog and made the mistake that many of us make...we went home and straight to the Internet. Yes, we found some wonderful information, but we also found some horribly misleading information. We spent the rest of that day in complete shock. I had to put on a brave face because I had to work that night and then my Dad and I were driving to Philadelphia the following morning for a family reunion.
We would later discover that Carter was the first CDH diagnosis they've had in a LOOOOONG time (I think something like 20 years). We will be forever grateful to Currie and Dr. Patterson (and everyone else behind the scenes) for finding the CDH and knowing that we needed a higher level of care than they could provide. They were the first medical professionals who played a role in saving Carter's life.
CDH babies should be born in hospitals with a Level III or IV NICU, with ECMO, with Nitric Oxide, and with Pediatric Surgeons & Neonatologists who are very familiar with the complexities of CDH. Many CDH babies are too fragile to be transported once born, so if they go undiagnosed it is oftentimes with deadly consequences. Carter, without a doubt, would not have survived the transport from our local hospital to Duke or UNC.
It's a day that brings back a lot of emotions. It's been a heartbreaking, thrilling, joyous, depressing, terrifying, confusing, angry, loving, exhausting, gut-wrenching, faith-questioning, exhilarating, triumphant year. When we began speaking to other CDH families just after D-Day, the one thing that resonated from all of them was: this will be the hardest thing you've ever had to endure, regardless of the outcome. And they were right. Until you've been the parent of a baby in the NICU, and you've watched your helpless newborn fight for his life, you just can't fully understand and we'll never be able to explain it to you. It's an experience I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, yet at the same time, an experience that has taught us so much and one I can't imagine not having on my resume of life. It's like having a membership to an exclusive club, a club you didn't seek to join, perhaps even a club you didn't know about until you became a member, but you are a member nonetheless.
In thinking about how we were going to handle this day, I knew that I didn't want it to be a sad day, for we have so much to be thankful for. So, I decided to take Carter back to the place where it all began. We went to Dr. Patterson's practice and Carter met all those wonderful people who started this journey to save his life. Currie even saved all the CDH ultrasound images that we'd never seen (like the image above). It was a great decision ~ although I thought I was going to have to fight Sheila to get Carter back!
We'll hug him a little tighter today and give him a few extra smooches. We'll think back to the details of that day many times today and I hope, in time, that the butterflies in our stomachs will calm and that one day May 30th will come and go before we even realize it's passed.
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