I knew I didn’t have the words to explain it, so I let her wave it away. I was still silently dumbfounded by the whole situation when Barb made it down to the room, cooing and fawning over my baby. Without one single cry from Mattie, they were able to get what they needed from her.
The following days were difficult. Every morning Mattie’s I.V. came out and had to be put back in. Everyone on the floor was very understanding and always called the NICU for help. They took blood from Mattie every day, testing the blood for infection levels, measuring whether the antibiotics were doing their job. The good news, as Dr. Edwards let me know during her rounds on our fifth day there, was that since her first blood draw in the ER, the infection hadn’t gotten any worse.
“You brought her in at just the right time, Mrs. Masters. This could have been a very different outcome if you hadn’t noticed her fever. You did a good job,” she said, smiling at me. “I’m going to order that she be taken off the heart monitor. She doesn’t need it anymore.”
“She doesn’t?”
“No. The first few nights we wanted to monitor her heart because she was a very sick little girl and I wasn’t sure how she would do on the antibiotics. But I’m confident she’s on the road to recovery. I think she’s out of the woods now.”
Hearing the doctor tell me that she was essentially afraid Mattie’s heart would stop in the middle of the night really scared me. I knew she was ill, but I’d never really stopped to think about the severity of everything going on. My mind had just been focused so fully on getting her better. I never let myself stop to think about the fact that I could have lost her.
“She was very sick, Mrs. Masters. I don’t want to mislead you,” Dr. Edwards said, placing a hand on my shoulder, obviously picking up on my sudden turn in mood. “But you’ve done a great job taking care of her. She’s making remarkable progress. In fact, I think we can release her sooner than I originally anticipated.”
“Really?” I was instantly uplifted. After days of feeling the heavy darkness looming over us, the uncertainty of what would happen, this was the first moment in which I felt like, just maybe, everything would be ok after all.
“Yes, but it’s going to take a bit of work on your part.”
“Anything. If Mattie needs it, I’ll do anything.”
“I thought so,” Dr. Edwards said, smiling. “If we were to release Mattie later this week, she would still need up to two weeks of antibiotic treatment administered intravenously. So, in order to make that happen outside of the hospital, we would need to put in a PICC line.”
“What is that?”
“It’s essentially a flexible catheter we insert up the vein in the arm and thread it through to the opening of the ventricle of her heart. It’s like a semi-permanent I.V. You can both administer drugs through the port and also draw blood from it, so she wouldn’t need to be poked every time we needed blood from her and she can get her antibiotics. There also is virtually no chance of the PICC line coming out, like her I.V.’s have been.”
“It goes into her heart?”
“No, not directly into it, we just thread it through until it is just above it.”
“Can it get into her heart? That sounds dangerous.”
“There’s a very small probability of that happening, especially since she’s a small and basically immobile child. Usually with older children we see problems with the line getting pulled out, by siblings or during play, but since she’s just a baby, the risk is really low.”
“Why has the duration of her stay changed so drastically? I thought we’d be here for weeks.”
“We take the care of our patients very seriously, and our staff is trained to recognize parents who are capable and parents who need help. The nursing staff here has been really impressed with your attentiveness to Mattie, and if we didn’t think you were capable of handling her care at home, I wouldn’t even be having this conversation with you. That being said,” she paused and gave me a small smile, “if you feel overwhelmed and would like for her to stay here while she completes the next two weeks of antibiotics, that’s fine too. I don’t want to send you home to fail at this, I want everyone to be happy and healthy. But think about it.”
“When would this all happen?”
“Well, I’d like to get a PICC line in her regardless of whether you stay or go. So, if you agree, that could happen in the next few days. And as soon as the PICC line is in, I would feel comfortable releasing her.”
My heart stuttered a little at her words. We could go home? I could take her home with me and we could just go back to being the little family I had spent nine months imagining?
“This is just one option, Mrs. Masters. Do not feel like you have to go this route.”
“I need to talk to my husband about it.”
“Of course. Talk about it with him, think about everything I’ve told you, and feel free to ask questions if they should arise.” She paused for just a moment and smiled at me, her cheeks becoming pink and round under her eyes. “Regardless, Mattie is going to be just fine and if nothing else, that’s something to celebrate.”