First time Blogger

Hello!
My name is Megan. I have 2 wonderful sons. Jaden Daniel who just turned 6 on April 29th. And I have Kwame Alexander Jr. who is a little over 14months. Both my boys are the joys of my life! Jaden settled me down...taught me the joys of struggling as a single parent. He turned me into an adult in so many ways. Most important thing about having him is I realized what kind of man I wanted in my life and what I would and would not tollerate in a relationship from a man. I stayed single and dedicated to Jaden for 3 years. I prayed, worked and went to school. I got my life together. Kwame Sr. fell into my lap May 25,2006. I hated that I had to bring Jaden on our first date but I was a single mother and had no choice. Well we have been joined at the hip since that day. He is the best dad I could ever wish for for Jaden. After 7months of TTC we found out we were pregnant July of 2007. Sept 2007 I was taking a bath and found myself sitting in a tub of blood clots! off to the ER we went. Everything turned out fine...but that was just the beginning! in nov 2007 I had a +afp test for spina bifida! once again everything turned out fine! Now onto Jan 08. Started having high blood pressure...had it with Jaden but not until 34 weeks and had him @ 35 weeks and he was healthy and fine and came home with me. But i was only like 26weeks. They gave my meds and sent me on my way.Then I fell and pulled my pubic symphysis.That had to be the most painful experience in the world! I had to be taken off work and I could not open my legs to walk! Then I got 2 flues/colds back to back my body aches and i had to wear depends because everytime I coughed I wet my pants. So when my body started to ache at the beginning of Feb 08 i thought "i'm just getting over the last 2 and here comes another!" well my body continued to hurt but I never got a cold or flu or anything else. So i chalked it up to being pregnant and fat.But then besides the pain being all over my body I started throwing up and being so severly cold that I would take hot baths until the hot water would run out! This went on until around Feb 20th...my body hurt sooooooooooooooooo bad i thought I was going to DIE! it felt like someone was trying to pull my spine out from between my shoulder blades. I did not know what to do with myself.Well Sat Feb 23 @ 4pm I called my doctor and said that I could not breathe and I was having chest pain. She said go to the hospital....so I took another bath and waited for Kwame to come home. He stayed with Jaden and I drove myself on what seemed to be the longest ride of my life 14mi to the hospital. I got there around 6pm. They took my blood pressure and the fire drill started! 201/150 was my bp! Im in soooooooo mych physical pain(not contractions but all over head to toe body pain)that I am begging for something for the pain.MORPHINE helped a little bit.By now I have called home and Kwame and Jaden are on the way via my wonderful dad! in the mean time my blood and been drawn and results are trickling in....I was DYING literally! I had no red blood cells, no platelets and my liver was about to explode! I had HELLP Syndrome class I platelet count under 50,000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HELLP_syndrome. There was no option but to have an emergency c-section.Death was knocking on my door. The doctor said I would have been dead befor midnight if i had stayed at home! So the take me in and put me to sleep...I could not be poked because I would bleed out.Even the c-section scar was only like 4inches. So only 31weeks pregnant @8:22pm Kwame Alexander Jr. was born 3lbs 6oz and 15inches. HE WAS COMPLETLY HEALTHY breathing on his own and everything. They only kept him for 2 weeks because he was fine. He came home March 8th 2008 weighing 3lbs 12oz it was also the day of our baby shower, and my 29th birthday was the next day 3/9. It was the best weekend of my life. Life was finally great. We could now start the next chapter of our life....or so I thought! We had this tiny little baby and we were doing everything by the book. No one could hold him..we did not take him out...we were doing our best to keep him healthy and safe...like a parent should. So after being home for what seemed to be a glorious 4weeks...something was wrong. Kwame was breathing funny and had normal temps all but one 105.3 but the next one was fine so I thought it was an error but he was not acting right. His dad fed him (pumped breast milk) @ 3am and brought him to bed. He was an every 2-3hr feeder. Well I woke up at 10am and he was still sleeping!?!?! did my baby finally sleep thru the night? or was something wrong. I trind to feed him and he would not eat! So I called my pediatrician....he told me it was probably a little virus give him pedialyte. Well all day we trind to feed him and he would not eat nor wold he sleep. He just laid there. He did eat a little and gave it all back up on me. Later that night after another call to the doc. off to the ER we went. Did I mention that I work at the hospital where he was born and were I was now taking him. I have worked there for 11years. We got him there and they drew his labs...he had an infection but they did not know where. So no they do a lumbar punture...its funny how I know all about this stuff and know its ok but I was still in HYSTERICS!so they admitted him early on a monday morning. Tues morning 24hrs later the doc walks in and says your baby has meningitis. So being in the nursing field I say "shouldn't we all be in isolation here?", "no Megan" with a blank face he says. He then asks me if I had group B strep when I was pregnant...yes I did. Well it turns out that I did not get the meds before delivery and now I have givin my new baby a death sentence! He had late onset bacterial meningitis...the worst form anyone can ever have. With really no positive outcomes. So out to the dest were he was charting I went running with 100000000 things running thru my mind and 100000000000000000000 tears running down my face all I could say is "can my baby die from this?" and all I got back was"yes Megan he can. And I cant give you any promises." and then he walked away from me and out the doors he went. I called my mom and could barely breathe...she has been an ICU charge nurse for 35yrs. She tells me we have to get him out of this hospital! I know this to. See I work for a great hospital...but only if you are an adult there is no PICU and a 1/2 functioning PEDS. Well they would not transfer him...long story short doc said no.....then he said yes and insurance said no....insurance got threatened....lol...they said yes....all the hopstial then said no, he is not sick enough! so there we sat for 21 longggggg days. It did bring Kwame and I closer together, but is was still heart breaking. PICC lines failed iv's not to mention for the first week our tiny little baby would sleep for 15min scream in pain for 45....he did that for 1week. I lived there for 21days. We finally get discharge orders. the doc said if we get thru 7days with no relapse, then we have a clean bill of health. We get thru the 7days. But our baby was not normal he cried ALLLL THHEEEE TIMMEEEE! we were going crazy. He had a left downward gaze, did not respond to noise, and having projectile vomiting. I thought he was deaf and blind (side effect of meningitis). 3 weeks after being discharged he had to have emergency surgery (at another hospital, I was not going back to my job) for a hernia repair with torsion testicles(he almost lost his testicles). And 3 weeks later we went to a family function and everyone was commenting on how big my babies head was?!?!? well I had a big head my first son had a big head and my mother had a big head as babies. I did not think anything of it until everyday Kwame kept saying "babe, I think his head is getting bigger!" So I did my nursing assesment...felt the fontanel...it was hard as a rock! I thought to mysef I dont think that gets hard till after 1yr?? but I could not remember....So another monday(why always on mondays?) I am back in the ER this time at my job. I know he has hydrpcephalus and I knew they would transfer him out. Well I was right and wrong, he did have severe hydrocephalus but they could not get a bed anywhere to transfer him! so I signed him out against medical advice with his iv in his foot and the bag of iv fluid i carried my naked baby out the door and in to the backseat of my mothers car. She drove us to CHLA where we walked into an er waiting room with a lot of people. Security told us to have a seat at the END of the line! probably a 2-3hr wait for a buck of kids with runny noses. Well my mom te charge nurse that she is rushed the triage doors when the guard opened then and went and talked nurse to nurse in the triage area and now I am walking past all the runny nose kids and straight to the back....oh yea I did bring the CT films with me now speed things up. We waited 12 hrs and finally got a bed...saw the neursurgeon...and could finally sleep awhile. They had to tap the what should be soft spot to make sure the meningits was not back...are you kidding me I thought! I thought if we got thru the first 7days we were all good....not true...you can get it again! Well there was no meningitis so we were scheduled for a vp shunt insertion the next morning. The doc says its very simple and we should go home the next day.OK GREAT! So off to surgery we go.I cry as the wheel my baby off but i know ge is going to be pain free after all this. 1hr later doc comes out everything went great! My baby is in recovery and screamingggggggggg! I am telling the nurses he is in pain and they are trying to tell me that he is probably hungry...we go back and forth they give him pain meds and pedialyte. All he has had up to this point is breast milk...wich btw saved his life...the meningitis would have killed him at birth if he wasn't getting breast milk. They take him to his room where Kwame sr feeds him 1oz of formula.Him and Jaden leave and its just me and my mom in the room. She had wanted to leave but said she would wait because there was traffic. Me and the baby fell asleep and my mom took him from my arms. Well the bad dream started! my mother started screaming! Megan he is not breathing!!! she started CPR! none of his monitors were on because the nurse did not put them on because we were sleeping...go figure! Everyone was in there within seconds!!! they were great! They thought that he had had to much pain meds so they gave him narcan to reverse that....and it didn't help! I felt my life slipping away from me! I could do nothing to help my little 3 1/2mo old baby boy! I had no hope! my mom kept saying everything was going to be ok! I finally screamed in her face NOTHING HAS BEEN OK SINCE THIS BABY HAS BEEN BORN! STOP TELLING ME EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OK!!! so intubated and helpless they wheel my baby boy to the PICU. Not knowing at all what is wrong...the surgeons come tap ALL the water off his head just in case...btw it looked terrible the top of his head was caved in. You could literally set an apple in it. Thank God that night the Ronald McDonald house had a room for us! he was in the PICU for a week before they figured out what had happened, he had aspirated on that 1oz of formula!!!he had a hard time breathing on his own when the would try to get him off the vent...but he finally did it! MRI showed severe brain,nerve and muscle damage....and NO ONE SINGLE doctor could answer my questions reguarding the future. So here we are almost a year later with a 14mo old who has therapy everyday and is severely delayed BUT HE IS ALIVE! He is making very slow progress and I have started looking for a good medical malpractice childrens lawyer. There were many mistakes made along the way that I will blog about later. I just wanted to get my page up and going. I have seen some of your pages and the one that made me start my page was the page of
The Beautiful Cayman Cindy I actually have been following her page for a little while but it took me this long to figure out how to make my own page. So I will end here for tonight...and i will be working on my page so bear with me. I would love to meet all moms from all walks of life.