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Anne Elise Bacon was on earth from her birth on April 28 through June 28, 2005. She is our 3rd child--the 2nd to precede us in death. It's shattering to bury your children, but our comfort is in the Good News of the Resurrection of the body in Christ Jesus. Anne was met in Heaven by her sister, Abigail, who died in 2003.
After Abigail died of sudden antenatal death syndrome referred here as SADS, we left the hospital with empty aching arms; but we also had a burning hope--hope that if we got pregnant with her, then perhaps God would give us another. We embarked on a grieving journey that involved studying everything we could in diabetic pregnancy management, fertility and ovulation awareness, and everything there is to know about a PCOS high risk pregnancy.
Miraculously, we conceived again 9 months later on September 2nd 2004, and we took our care to the university teaching hospital where they specialize in high risk diabetes--how we wish we'd known of them when we were pregnant with Abigail. Our pregnancy with Anne was uneventful and delightful. We declined any invasive prenatal testing because we didn't want to put the pregnancy at risk. We were slated for countless high risk ultrasounds, so we figured we'd get the head's up if there was anything not progressing as it should. Other than Anne running a little small, the ultrasounds never indicated a single problem. We even had an ECG that looked straight into her heart--it never revealed the heart murmur that would ultimately be to her demise.
Since Abigail suffered from SADS caused by late term cord constriction, we monitored Anne's late term growth vigilantly. We scheduled induction for April 28, 2005, but Anne ended up being born by c-section after experiencing some dangerous cardiac issues during early labor. We discovered after her birth that she had a sizeable VSD (
ventricular septal defect) caused by Trisomy 18 (an extra 18th chromosome).
Sadly, the university hospital policy was to retreat on any specialized cardiac care when Trisomy was indicated. Anne wasn't even a candidate to see their cardiologist once her Trisomy was confirmed. So the university sent us home with hospice, not expecting Anne to grow or thrive or live, and yet she proved week in and week out that she rather liked it here.
Medically, all we had to work with was our pediatrician. As much as we loved her, she was inexperienced in Trisomy 18 and VSD--although she learned a lot about non-surgical VSD for us, and we'll always appreciate her for that. She put Anne on a simple cardiac medication called Lasix, and it was working wonderfully to control her pulmonary edema.
I don't know why, but it never really sank in that we could have sought cardiac care elsewhere once we were released from the university--our city is small and has limited resources and I guess we just figured if the largest teaching hospital in our state wouldn't help us, then who would. We came to learn, albeit too late, that nation-wide there are many pediatric cardiology specialists who would have worked with us in spite of Anne's Trisomy. We firmly believe that with a little better cardiac care she just might have kept on going a good while longer.
Our heads were in a clueless fog always waiting for the other shoe to drop. The hospice "support" had never considered the possibility that Anne just might live if given a little teeny bit of specialized cardiac care. In fact to our dismay, hospice later decided to take Anne off the Lasix, a decision made independently of our pediatrician--why we don't know. We've speculated, we asked, they hummed & hawed and avoided the issue--of course the diagnosis of Trisomy 18 covers their butts without culpability.
We don't know what motivated them to make such a decision when a simple $4 bottle of medication that was helping Anne thrive. We do know that they were rather like "gentle vultures" always seeming to want the "inevitable" to hurry up. Every time they came into our home their counsel was in hopelessness--never mind this sweet happy growing baby we had living with us.
For whatever reasons, hospice took Anne's Lasix away and she died of congestive heart failure within 10 days of its discontinuation. Our pediatrician was shocked. She had even researched a plan for increasing her dosages to accommodate Anne's growth and weight gain. The first thing out of her mouth when we told her that hospice had taken away the medication was: WHY? That's the million dollar question that we'll never get an answer to.
Bottom line is that many medical and hospice agencies brush such a patient off as dead before they really are--death is their job; indifference their motto. Politically, Anne was deemed a non-candidate for any cardiac care thanks to her Trisomy. In spite of their Trisomy politics, she thrived and grew until her VSD couldn't maintain her life any longer. She died at home in her mother's arms June 28, 2005 at 11:03pm. Anne and Abigail wait for us in the butterfly meadows of Heaven. We'll see you soon, Sweeties!
http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/anneelisebacon
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