More of Our Journey (Part 2)
Here is the second part of chapter 3. To read the first, please click here: More of our Journey {Part 1}. And to read about Hannah’s accident click here: The Day Time Split in Half.
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Hannah, along with all the beeping machines and monitoring equipment, was loaded onto the helicopter. With blades slicing the air she headed east for a more equipped hospital. And me, with lead feet, found my way to yet another friend’s car and battled traffic to follow her.
Eric rode with a friend in our van, and Joshua followed with another friend closely behind, all of us headed to Children’s Hospital. I was so numb with shock, my emotions a swirl of contradictions. It was as if I was living someone else’s life. My friend navigated Denver streets and we talked about what had happened pondering the questions ahead. But reality wasn’t a factor yet, it hadn’t settled anywhere in my mind. My dear friend is a prayer warrior, and she and I prayed hard on that drive. My friend began peaking words of reassurance, words about how this wasn’t going to end in death and that Hannah would recover. She was so full of faith and I clung to each word like a life preserver.
Children’s Hospital is an overwhelming place, it is an environment where hope dances with fear and knowledge dances with touch. We entered through the emergency room, a loud and busy place. Passing fussy babies with fevers and grade school boys with crazy injuries, I made my way back in search of Hannah. Eric had already arrived and I found him next to Hannah surrounded by yet another commotion of doctors and nurses. Seeing her still and lifeless like that took my breath away, again. The dire on everyone’s face was sobering, almost suffocating. We stood as close as we could, silently expecting her to open her eyes, to flinch, anything. She didn’t, the narcotics and some invisible injury keept her unconscious. But I sill leaned in, expecting her to roll over and reach for me.
To the best of our knowledge, Hannah was underwater for two or three minutes. Brain cells need oxygen to process the signals between neurons and begin to die after about four minutes without oxygen. In a sense the victim goes from holding their breath into hypoxemia (low oxygen in the bloodstream). They hypoxemia causes the body to become acidic, which in turn puts incredible stress on the heart, basically inducing cardiac arrest. This stifles oxygen to the brain and as body function declines, aspiration of water into the lungs occurs. 1 in 5 who die from drowning are children under the age of 14, making drowning the second leading cause of unintended injury-related deaths in children. The odds were stacked against us, we knew it and the medical staff knew it.
We weren’t in the emergency room for long. They quickly moved Hannah up to the PICU on the third floor, to a room with sterile tile and another flurry of rubber-soled shoes. Your body follows along involuntarily it seems, while your brain lags behind. It’s a vortex of action and you just try to keep up. Someone gently grabbed my arm, “Come with me” she said, and lead us to the adjacent room with a window overlooking into Hannah’s.
It was audibly quieter in there, but uncertainty still brimmed just below the surface. The sight of commotion streaming in through the glass, blaring our scary reality. Silence talks loud sometimes.
“I’m Robyn” she said, “and we’re going to do all we can for Hannah.” Her hand squeezed my forearm with a warmth I needed. She answered some of our questions, explaining what the Doctors and Nurses were doing. Her words gentle but honest. At one point she said that Hannah was “one sick little girl” and the grave reality of the situation began to settle in front of me. We stood there watching through that window for what felt like eternity, the world spinning, and me powerless to help.
The Tower arrived, a collection of medicine pumps and various monitors on wheels. . It would follow Hannah for the days and weeks to come. In what looked like a scramble, but was truly a well-choreographed sequence, they began connecting her to the various monitors, poking in IV needles and shifting her into a neck brace. They attached a long term ventilator to the tubes in her mouth and began taping electrodes to her forehead and temples. The electrodes were for the EEG (electroencephalogram) that would continuously monitor her brain activity for the days to come. Nurses scurried, Doctors watched and listened, everyone evaluated. We couldn’t hear their conversations, but we didn’t have to, their faces and actions told us everything we needed to know. She was alive, but still in very critical condition. As the machines began to take over and IV bags dripped on cue, the staff stepped back. All the while, my sweet precious Hannah laid there motionless. She was fighting and for that I was grateful, but I just wanted her to roll over and open her eyes. I have never willed for something seemingly so little with such desperation in all of my life. She was stable but she was not out of the woods.
The commotion settled and Robyn brought us back to Hannah’s bedside. As the staff explained the purpose for the various apparatuses attached to her ten year old body, I just stood there somewhat in shock, my world spinning and my body numb. Hannah looked nothing like that vibrant girl I had loaded into the van just this morning. Each hum from the respirator would raise and lower her chest methodically, her hair was still wet, her face vacant. I wanted to wrap her up and hold her tight. I wanted to calm the raging storm and sing sweet songs. I wanted things back the way they were when we started this day.
The whirlwind of chaos had subsided for now, the torment of waiting took over with the “now-what’s”. They were monitoring her brain activity and needed to gather information about her condition over the next several hours. We’d been fairly certain she hadn’t hit her head on the wall of the pool, but no one knew for sure. No one knew the full extent of the trauma, but unbeknownst to Eric and I, few believed she’d make it through the night.
