Sometimes You Hear What You Want To Hear

I returned back to the Labor & Delivery room to find that Bekah was being transferred to Recovery.

After everyone had departed and things settle down, I told Bekah all that had happened with checking Nathan into the hospital and that we were supposed to call at 6:30 to find out more, which by this time was not that far away, but still couldn't come fast enough.

At the appointed hour, I phoned the NICU to find out more, anything really, about Nathan and what the plan was. I was connected with the doctor on staff and she informed me that they were deciding whether or not to put Nathan on ECMO and that she would call me back once they had made the decision.

I hung up the phone and told Bekah that they were deciding whether or not to put Nathan on ECMO. She and I both understood that to mean that Nathan was doing better than expected and would likely not need to be placed on ECMO. We were excited and comforted by that fact and decided to get some sleep until they called back.

Within an hour, the doctor had called back and let us know that they had decided to go ahead and place ECMO and asked for our consent for the procedure. Without hesitation, we readily agreed and went back to sleep.

Sometimes, it's an amazing thing how the mind works. You can easily hear words and assign them a meaning that best fits the scenario you want.

It was over a month after Nathan was born that we "secretly" found out what happened during those fateful 45 minutes between 6:30 and 7:15am.

When the doctor had told us that they were deciding whether or not to put Nathan on ECMO, we assumed that to mean, as mentioned above, that Nathan was doing better than they expected and that ECMO might not be necessary to save his life.

What the doctor actually meant was that Nathan was much more worse off than they expected and they were debating whether or not it would be worth it to put him through the stress of the surgery when, statistically, he wasn't likely to survive.

During those last 45 minutes of discussion, even though medically the likelihood of Nathan surviving was extremely low, the decision was made to go ahead and let the opportunity for a miracle happen.

And that's a decision that we are grateful for every single day.