Monday, August 12, 1991 was only the beginning of a terribly long week that will remain embedded in my memory for as long as I live.  Early that morning, I headed to United Hospital Center (UHC) in Clarksburg, West Virginia.  It was the moment I had eagerly anticipated and I was brimming with excitement, despite the fear that was lodged somewhere between my throat and abdomen. I was pregnant and scheduled for a Cesarean Section[1]. 
            My family and I arrived at the hospital just a few minutes before 7:00 a.m. and, I went directly to the nurse's station to sign in.  Once I had finished, a nurse took me into a room where she traded me a thin, breezy gown and a pair of blue paper slippers for my street clothes.  I was then escorted to the operating room and placed on a cold, hard table.  Nurses began hooking wires, monitors, and Intravenous (IV) Lines[2] to me.  While they were busy prepping me, the Anesthesiologist[3] explained to me the procedure that was about to take place.  As he construed how the epidural anesthetic[4] worked, I felt myself begin to panic.  The nurses then started playing their motherly roles by holding my hands and assuring me that everything would be all right.  "Just relax, you're okay."  I heard this over and over while I was being pinched and poked and flipped in this direction and that.  They were all working quickly, but it seemed as if they were taking forever.
            After a little while, I was finally ready to for the surgery.  My husband came in and sat down beside me offering a familiar hand to hold.  Then, Dr. Ali Rahimian began his operation.  Thankfully, this part went quicker than the prepping did.  It seemed like only a couple of seconds had gone by when he announced, "You have a girl."  Dale looked at me with gleaming eyes and said, "Well, you got what you wanted."  One of the nurses handed our little bundle to him and he held her close to me so I could see her.  She was so tiny, weighing only six pounds and ten ounces, and she was beautiful.  I was so happy that I nearly cried.    To my disappointment, I merely saw her for a brief moment before I was shipped to the recovery room.
            While in recovery, I struggled impatiently to move my legs, because I had to remain there until I did so.  The desire to get to my room and enjoy my new baby girl, Emily Brooke, was urgent.  Roughly ten minutes passed before I accomplished my goal and was headed to my room to be with her.  A moment after the escorting nurses settled me in and left the room, another nurse entered.  I was anxious, and immediately asked where Emily was.  By the discontented look on the nurse's face, I could tell she was not offering pleasant news.  She explained to me that Emily was blue and having difficulty breathing.  The Pediatrician on duty suspected pneumonia and they were transporting her by helicopter to Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown.  However, I was able to see her for a short moment before they transferred her. 
The nurse went for her and returned pushing an incubator.  She gently lifted Emily out and handed her to me wrapped in a white, cotton receiving blanket with pink and blue stripes.  Because of her condition, they had not bathed her and her hair was matted to her little head.  I held her close and cried.  I was so terrified.  I didn't want them to take away my little girl and even more so, I wanted her to be all right.  The nurse, standing over us like a guard dog, said,"It's okay if you kiss her."  I'm not sure why, but I desperately wanted to lash out at her.  "Of course, it's okay if I kiss her," I felt like screaming.
            The crew arrived to take Emily away much too soon.  They put her in a different incubator than the one the nurse had taken her out of and disappeared with her.  I was left clinging on to the empty little blanket that she had been wrapped in.  I wanted to go with her, but couldn't.  I had just undergone major surgery and had to be under observation for a couple of days.  All that was left to do was pray and wait.  This was not the way things were supposed to be happening.  The birth of a new baby is intended to be joyous, not sad.
            Emily had been gone for a couple of hours when a Pediatrician came in to see me.  He had gotten the results from Morgantown.  He informed me that Emily had Transposition of the Great Arteries[5].  The oxygenated blood that should have been circulating through her body was, instead, being carried back to the heart where it received more oxygen.  Whereas, the blue blood (non oxygenated), which was supposed to be circulating through the heart to gather oxygen, was pumping through her body.  The only solution was open-heart surgery.  I didn't want to accept that; I couldn't accept that.  It was much too painful.
            As soon as the Pediatrician left, I began praying.  I prayed that the doctors were wrong or that the X-rays were wrong.  I prayed that when they looked again her little heart would be fine.  Then, after getting the number from a nurse, I called the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Ruby Memorial and requested that they take another look at Emily's heart.  Honoring my request, they looked again only to find the same results.  But I still could not accept it.  I began praying then, that God would heal her, that He would mend her little heart so that the doctors would not have to operate on her.  And again, I called the NICU for more testing.  I just refused to face the fact that my tiny baby had to have heart surgery.  This went on for two days, until Dr. Rahimian released me and I was able to go to Morgantown to be with Emily.  Upon arrival, I checked into the Ronald McDonald House[6] and was in walking distance of the hospital. 
            During my first visit with Emily, I became vastly upset.  Seeing my tiny baby lying bare under an oxygen tent with wires, tubes, and IV's jutting out everywhere was nearly too much to handle.  She was unable to eat or breathe on her own.  They had placed a tube in her navel, through which they fed her and one through her nose, leading to her stomach, to vacuum out acids and waste to keep her from vomiting.  There were several small, round stickers on her chest with wires attached to them for measuring her heart rate.  The sight of it all was overwhelming.
            Shortly after arriving, a doctor confronted me to offer details of Emily's condition and what needed to be done.  He explained that a specialist would perform the surgery and that I needed to sign a consent form.  Still yet in denial, I requested that they look once more before I signed any forms.  He agreed to do so.  The results were still the same.  Faced with the inevitable, I signed authorization for Emily to be operated on.
            She was scheduled for surgery during the evening, on Monday, the 19th of August, precisely one week from the day she was born.  When the time came, the family gathered at the hospital to await the outcome.  The surgery seemed to take forever and a physician kept us posted.  At one point he informed us that they had lost her, but they managed to revive her and she was stable.  At another, he announced they had finished but, found a hole in her heart and had to re-enter.  After several hours had passed, the operation was finally over and Emily remained in stable condition.  Cautiously, the specialist left her chest open, just in case they had to operate again.
            After the surgery, my husband and I were the only ones permitted to see Emily.  When the nurse led us to her, I could not believe my eyes.  Our little girl was so swollen from the effects of the surgery that she was unrecognizable.  Though she was only one week of age, she appeared to be three months.  Making the situation worse, that they had not covered her.  We could see her tiny heart beating through a transparent film that had been stitched over the open hole in her little chest.  I was so shocked.  I hid my face against my Dale's chest and wept.  How could they have permitted us to see that?  It was horrible.
            Despite our determination to remain with Emily, the physician who had kept us informed recommended that we get some rest.  He promised to contact us if anything changed.  With that, we returned to our room at the Ronald McDonald House.  However, with our worrying, we did not get much rest.  I spent quite some time weeping into the stripped receiving blanket that had been left in my grasp when Emily was transported from UHC.  It was the longest night of my life.  And early the next morning, we were called back to the hospital.  Our precious baby girl, Emily Brooke Hardy, had passed away and, this time could not be recovered.
            It was during this horrific event in August of 1991 that I realized the world isn't always a very nice place.  We never once suspected when we went to the hospital to give birth to our little girl, that we would come home only with broken hearts and memories that will trouble us for the rest of our lives.
[1] A Cesarean Section (also called C-Section) is a surgical procedure to deliver a baby through an incision in the lower abdomen and uterus.  University of Maryland Medicine
[2] An Intravenous (IV) Line is a thin plastic tube inserted into a vein (usually the patients forearm) through which a volume of fluid is injected into the bloodstream.  University of Maryland Medicine
[3] An Anesthesiologist is a physician who is specialized in the practice of anesthesiology, the branch of medicine specializing in the use of drugs or other agents that cause insensibility to pain.  MedTerms.com
[4] An epidural anesthetic is injected into the 'epidural space' in the middle and lower back, just outside the spinal space, to numb the lower extremities.  University of Maryland Medicine
[5] When Transposition of the Great Arteries occurs, the Aorta (main artery that carries blood) branches out of the Pulmonic Valve (Right Ventricle), and the Pulmonary Artery (artery that carries low oxygen blood to the lungs) branches out of the Aortic Valve (Left Ventricle).  The Children's Heart Institute
[6] Ronald McDonald Houses are charitable facilities located near major hospitals to provide parents of ill children a place to stay (a "home-away-from-home") for a small fee (usually five to twenty dollars per night).
Emily Brooke
May 6, 2002
Note: This is the most difficult piece I have ever written.  This essay is about the little girl that I lost in 1991.  It is very detailed and sad.  Reading this can be upsetting.
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