VSD (Very Sad Day)
In my previous blog, I spoke about our first week with our son, how it was filled with doctors appointments but also perfect tender family moments that I will remember and cherish forever. We were settling into a good routine, enjoying what was supposed to be newborn bliss. Then one very early morning, our joy was stolen by the urgency to bring our son to the nearest emergency room because of pulmonary distress.
It was a wet summer morning as we hastily gathered our belongings and baby bag. The sun was hours away from rising. Our son DJ was breathing abnormally fast and we were on our way to the nearby hospital’s emergency room. Two headlights guided our way through the dreary dark. I was tired but wide awake, optimistic that this was nothing major but scared of what it could potentially be.
When we got to Winchester Hospital, they checked us into the emergency room. I was completely overwhelmed by the whole situation with various doctors and nurses coming in to check on DJ. The details I do remember from this visit were that DJ was tachypneic (breathing fast) and he was having retractions. Newborns normally have a respiratory rate of between forty to sixty breaths per minute. DJ had a respiratory rate of over 100 breaths per minute. The on-call doctor at Winchester Hospital quickly told us that they couldn’t handle the case in this emergency room and were making arrangement to have DJ transferred to the NICU (Newborn Intensive Care Unit) at Boston Children’s Hospital so that he could get the care he needed.
Separated from my family, I drove through rainy Wednesday morning rush hour traffic in Boston. Ishtar rode with DJ in the ambulance as he was rushed over to Boston Children’s Hospital. The first call I made was to my big brother. I followed that up with a call to my mom. I was confused, upset, angry even, thinking why our innocent son, why us?
The first day in the NICU with DJ was overwhelming. Were it not for the excellent note taking of Boston Children’s Hospital or Ishtar’s medical background, I would have been completely lost. Constant beeping of the health monitors echoed the 24-bed NICU. With two chairs pulled up to DJ’s bed, we stayed by our baby boy’s side as the doctors and nurses went from one bassinet to another.
Various tests were done on DJ to determine what was causing his tachypnea. We were in an isolation room because they suspected he had COVID. They did everything from x-rays to echocardiograms. DJ was put on put on high flow O2 to help him breathe better. The blood tests and viral tests were able to rule out an infection of bacterial or viral in nature, but his lungs were wet as seen in his chest x-ray. What we were left with was the VSD that was diagnosed from his earlier cardiology visit. It was explained to us that DJ’s VSD was allowing extra blood to be pumped into his lungs causing them to be wet or hyperperfused. Symptoms of wet lungs are tachypnea, difficulty sustaining energy for eating and being easy to tire. This VSD that DJ has was not just going to be a benign condition for him, it was going to be something that would make the beginning of his life difficult, require medication and potentially open-heart surgery if the condition did not correct itself. They started his medication, Lasix, which is a diuretic, to help flush fluid from his body.
DJ went 18 hours before we could feed him again. Hungry and upset, he gladly accepted his milk. As the clock approached midnight, there wasn’t really a good place for us to stay over to be with DJ. Knowing that we had to get rest so we can continue to be there for him, Ishtar and I reluctantly left the hospital without our newborn son.
The drive home was somber. We spoke about what this could mean for us as parents, for DJ. We thought about the best case scenario, the worst case scenario, not knowing how all of this would affect us or maybe even break us. Upon entering our home, we already felt a huge empty void even though we were only at home with DJ for a week. His belongings scattered in nearly every room at the house, his scent wafted in the air, his image vivid in every corner of the house but the reality was he was not with us, he was spending the night alone in his NICU bassinet being cared for by kind and highly-skilled strangers. Our hearts sank even lower in our own home. After freshening ourselves up for the night, we called the NICU to make sure DJ was still doing great. Despite the reassurance from the nurse, Ishtar and I held each other tightly as we fell asleep with tears in our eyes.
