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(This is the final installment in a three-part series. If you would like to start at the beginning, scroll down to the post titled "Why I Support St. Jude's.")

After more than a week in the hospital, my son had a CAT scan that located an infection in his abdomen, behind the incision from his surgery. This meant a second surgery, and I didn’t even try to hide my anguish from the doctors—up until this point everything had gone wrong. I’d lost my ability to believe in good outcomes. Happily, this surgery went well.

The incision was reopened and the infection was cleaned out. My son’s fever immediately broke and he was remarkably perky in the recovery room. Unfortunately the incision could not be closed. We were told it had to heal from the inside out in case any bacteria were lingering there. My son now had a four-inch wide incision just below his belly that was a gaping wound. It would need to remain bandaged and be packed with saline-soaked gauze; three times a day, the old packing would need to be removed and new packing put in.

“Can you do it?” the surgeon asked.

As if I had any choice. I wanted my son to heal, I wanted to take him home as quickly as possible, I would steel myself to do whatever I had to do to accomplish that.

The first time they showed me his incision, I was freaked out. An entire fat roll of gauze had been packed into it. I watched with disbelief as the doctor used tweezers to carefully extract what looked like two feet of gauze, and then used swabs to poke more gauze in. E couldn’t bear watching, and admitted he couldn’t handle dealing directly with the incision at all. I swallowed my fear and revulsion and over the course of a day or two, learned how to pack and dress my son’s wound. The constant putting down and tearing off of the surgical tape was damaging his tender skin, so the nurses worked on a system to hold his dressings in place.

We finally got to go home TEN days after we’d arrived at the hospital for what we thought would be a half-day visit. We hired a nurse to come and help with the dressing changes. Our insurance company only covered a limited number of home health care visits and E had to travel for work so I was often doing the dressing changes completely on my own. Cathy, the visiting nurse, worked with me and gave me courage. Her entire home health career had revolved around adults, most of them elderly. She had never had a pediatric patient before and had to adjust. We were in this together, and she did an amazing job.

The day I took my son to the hospital for his final post-op checkup, I started to bleed. The next day I was at my doctor’s office, watching with dread as my obstetrician’s face reflected bad news during the ultrasound. She sent me off for blood work.

It was Halloween. I heard the staff hush as I walked out of the office, and I knew the blood tests would confirm what the ultrasound suggested: I was losing the baby. I was nearly 12 weeks along and wondered whether the stress I’d experienced at the hospital had caused me to miscarry. I’ll never know.

The good news is my son fully recovered from his surgery, though he had horrible nightmares for months afterwards. While I was devastated by my miscarriage and had to have a D & C, I became pregnant again two months later and was blessed with my little girl. Interestingly enough, she was born a year to the day of my son’s surgery—a karmic consolation prize for all the heartache we’d endured.

Despite our happy ending, I’ve never forgotten the horrors of the pediatric wing and the challenges and pain faced by the children and parents who spend time there. What could be worse than having a seriously ill or chronically ill child?

This is why E and I donate to St. Jude’s. Anything we can do to make a sick child’s life better matters more than we can express. I encourage you to consider supporting your local children’s hospital or a research hospital like St. Jude’s. The children, the parents, and the staff need and deserve our prayers and contributions.

October 27, 2006