Like the classy man that I am, I chose to spend this Friday evening with my family at the local Walmart. After wandering about dreamily imagining all the quality items we could purchase if I landed one of the jobs I interviewed, we made our way to the exit. Reaching the cool evening air my wife noticed a damp chill and had a sudden realization. “I think my water broke.” Not able to see around her own beach-ball-sized belly, I step back to assess the situation. She was covered in blood! I did not know what this meant, but I knew it was not good. Throwing my tiny family into my old but fast Audi, I sped through the small streets of Concord, NH like an Italian Formula One driver. Sprinting in to the emergency room in a panic, I quickly grabbed help and we brought my wife inside. After some quick imaging, we were informed that Adrienne had been hemorrhaging for over a week and that the dam had just broke as it were. And since our son was due in less than a month, but was nearly full size, they would deliver him that night via cesarean section to save my wife.
Excited for a new son and nervous for my wife we didn’t have to wait long before they rolled her into the operating room. I stayed with Adrienne on the side of the sheet where they were not dissecting my wife and waited. Just after midnight, there was a faint cry from the other side of the sheet. Shortly thereafter the nurse brought around a pudgy little dark haired beautiful boy for us to see. So handsome, but something was not right. He didn’t sound right. I noticed the nurse giving him a few concerned looks too. After a few short minutes the nurse said she needed to look at him and began to suction and probe this wheezing little ball of baby chub. The doctor and nurse worked on my son as another medical team stapled and soldered up my wife a few feet away. My son did not improve and soon they put him in a high oxygen incubator. Over the next few hours as Adrienne moved to recovery, I watched my son minute by minute slip further and further into the critical zone. Every hour they upped his oxygen level and every hour his oxygen saturation in his blood declined. Wanting some answers I tracked down the doctor tending to my son, a young resident. I found him in a back room frantically searching through medical books for answers. Now I’m not medically trained, but I know that if the doctor needs to go look something up, this can’t be good. The doctor looked rather sheepish of being caught looking through his books, but if it would save my son, please read away.
The research was to no avail. Calling in the lead pediatrician at the hospital yielded no improvement. And by 6:00 AM the medical staff informed me that my son was in extreme distress and would need to be life-flighted from Concord to the Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital in Hanover, NH. I was beside myself. One of the nurses there sensing what I could not, appreciated that this might be the only chance to get photographs of our son alive and quickly grabbed a Polaroid camera and took a few pictures. She also pressed me for his name, again realizing that it is best to give the child a name while he is still alive. We had been going back and forth over names the past week, but had not reached a full consensus. Still in shock and with my wife under heavy sedation I gave him the last name we had discussed.
Within minutes, a helicopter crew arrived dressed in green flight suits and packaged my son into what could best be described as a baby missile with a small window revealing its tiny infant cargo. I watched helplessly as they inserted tubes and monitors, making it difficult to distinguish where machinery ended and my son began. I watched as each time my son tried to breathe in his sternum nearly touched his spine. It looked like his chest was collapsing under some invisible weight. His little body convulsed and twitched at every movement just fighting to stay alive. All too soon they told me it was time to say goodbye. I touch the glass window separating us and whispered a tearful farewell. They quickly wheeled him off toward the helicopter and my son and prayers flew heavenward. With my wife still asleep, I went down to the cafeteria and cried into my untouched tray of food.
Jeff dropped me off at the front door and I scrambled to find the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of this Mall of American sized hospital. Finally being directed to a distant wing of an upper floor, I found the hallway leading to the NICU. At the end of the hallway I could see the receptionist sitting at this distant counter. Hurrying down the hallway I had the sudden and terrifying epiphany; with no cell coverage between the hospital in Concord and the hospital in Hanover, I had been in an information blackout for six hours. I had no idea what news would greet me once I reach that counter. My son could have died hours ago and I would have no idea until the receptionist's eyes looked down when I inquired about my son. I have no words to explain how helpless and frightening this realization was. There was an immense diversion of paths at the end of this hallway. One could take me to a funeral with a tiny casket and other could take me to the miracle of another son. So I froze there in the middle of that hallway, not wanting to have to learn which path fate had chosen for me. Yet, what do you do? I had to know, I had to move forward. So I bolstered myself and slowly walked forward to this judgement desk, heart fully in my stomach.
I was greeted by an older full-bellied man with immensely kind eyes whose name plate identified him as “David.” Sporting a well-trimmed graybeard and denim overalls, he didn’t quite fit the profile of a bearer of news that could tear my life apart. Taking a deep breath, I asked more than stated “I’m Brett Hansen. My son was life-flighted here earlier this morning?” My body clinched up preparing for his response. Would his brow furrow? Would his eyes break contact and look down? Effortlessly, a broad grin emerged from David’s beard, “Ah yes, Lockee’s dad. Come on back and see your son.” Tears came to my eyes immediately, not for the first time and not the last time during these weeks, but the one time that they flowed for joy. I followed David back to see my baby Locke, resting peacefully for the first time of his life. He was hard to see through all of the wires, IVs, breathing tubes, and monitors, but he was alive, he looked like the Borg, yet alive none the less!
Locke turns 16 just after midnight tonight and it has been the same number of years since the… second… most difficult period of my life. I am pleased report that Locke is one of the most helpful, obedient, and handsome teenage sons you could ask for. And despite the asthma that resulted from his underdeveloped lungs, he’s one of the top sophomore cross-country runners in the district (“sucks to your asthma Piggy”), not to mention a straight A student. In reflection on this night and day more than a decade and a half ago, I think sometimes that we look upon these trials and ordeals in our lives as something to merely survive. The event is a scar that will heal… but only one day. Yet I wonder if this is not a little short sighted. Perhaps if we take a step back and look at the bigger picture, sometimes these crises are simply the prologue to much larger, fuller, and amazingly happy stories that we will only see many years later as we sit down to write a little blog post in a house full of sleeping children… including one perfect but now giant baby Lockee. And so perhaps with that perspective, I will look at the first most difficult period of my life as but the opening act in what will end up as an completely fulfilling and happy story.
Post Script:
The drama didn’t end that first day in the NICU, only the main point of the blog post. The next nearly three weeks in the intensive care unit were far from easy. Adrienne with her midsection stapled together, checked herself out of the hospital three days earlier than recommended and joined me for the vigil with our son. After 10 days the doctor finally pronounced that he thought Locke would make it. We also found out that he’d gone into complete respiratory failure on the helicopter and had to be revived. Other children joined Locke in the NICU, some made it, others did not. Both of my parents and Adrienne’s mother rotated time with us then. We saw miracles and we saw heartache. And then after 17 days in the NICU, they pulled out all of that tubes and wires that were keeping our son alive just the day before and said “You can take him home now.” Needless to say, the next several days and nights we watched him like a hawk. Listening to every breath and waking the poor child every time he rested too stilly. The drama was over… until Adrienne went into labor a month early with baby number 3….
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