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Well we had a hard time getting Katie here to begin with. Her mother had kidney troubles and had to have surgeries all through pregnancy just to keep the lines open. Katie was born Sept 20, 2001, yeah right after THAT day. Well Katie felt the same way, right after being born she said "Piss on you world" Literally. :) She was a pretty healthy happy baby, really easy to get along with, Not to mention BEAUTIFUL!!! :). Sometime in October she came down with Meningitis (viral or bacterial I don't remember, which ever is less serious.) and had to be put in Cardinal Glennon Hospital for a couple days. While she was there they also diagnosed her with a hole in her heart. The doctors told us "Oh don't worry" Who ME? Worry!!! They said it would probably close on it's own. Well we got through all this and zoomed through the holidays with no troubles. Then on Janurary 22, 2002 she was laying down for a nap and stopped breathing. We started CPR and the ambulance got there and took her to the local hospital. They got her heart beating again and had her on a breathing machine. They decided the best thing was for her to go to Cardinal Glennon again. So Katie got a trip in a helicopter to CG. When we got there the doctors told us that what we had here was called "Interupted SIDS". In cases like these the babies can last as long as another couple days (48hrs), but by then the swelling from the brain damage cuts puts pressure on the brain stem and makes them completely brain dead. With this knowlege we started our vigil. At 48hrs after she stopped breathing she was fairly stable (there had been some scares, but she was fighting it seemed), we started to have some hope that we might get our Katie back even if she would have some special needs. Well that was quickly shattered an hour or so later. Things started to go down hill quickly, she started to bleed out from her stomach, and the swelling of her brain became more noticeable. They took her down for another brain scan, and did some other tests to determine brain death/viability. The scan showed massive damage and of the other tests the best we got was 1 or 2 attempted gasps for a breath per minute. So they told us she was 99% brain dead, but not totally. What this meant was that we were going to have to make the decision to take her off of life support or not. We gather most of the family and allowed every one to come in and say goodbye one last time. Then life support was removed and Katie slipped away while being held by Mommy and DAddy. This was Janurary 24, 2002. |
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