The List

Every so often I open up the wooden box that holds my most precious little treasures and remove a single piece of paper from the plastic bag that protects it so that I can not just read the list of dates and times that cover both sides but touch them. I can feel the writing that records each time my infant self danced with death, and each time those who love me cut in and reclaimed me. Some of the dates are simply noted with a date and a time, some are noted with a date and time, others indicate that 911 was necessary, and then a few are circled to indicate that these were the episodes when I danced with death the longest. One in particular is circled in red, the episode that changed how my entire family views life. When I was 5 months old, my parent's were asked to meet with the group of doctor's that were providing my care at Children's Hospital in one of the conference rooms. I had been diagnosed with what was then labeled "near miss SIDS" a month or two prior when my mother discovered me without respiration or a clear pulse shortly after I had fallen asleep. No medical explanation for the severe apnea episodes was ever established, and so after running every test they could imagine the doctors had sent me home with an apnea monitor and the reassurance that I would outgrow the episodes by my first birthday. The issue was that in the early 1980s the apnea monitors were not very portable, and they did not function at all in automobiles. My parents had stayed out later than they planned, and on the drive home I accidentally fell asleep in the backseat. My mother was frequently checking my breathing, but in between those checks I slipped quietly into an apnea episode. When she discovered that I was not breathing the choices available to my parents were limited - the stimulation that usually roused me was ineffective, there were no cellular phones, and attempting CPR on the side of a rural Michigan road could be disastrous if I did not respond a there was no way to summon help. My father immediately began to drive to the nearest hospital while my mother attempted CPR (CPR in a Jeep at night is quite a challenge). When they arrived, my mother ran into the Emergency Room carrying me (at that point I was a limp infant lacking both respirations and a heartbeat and had progressed from the familiar blue tinge to a grayish color) in her arms and screaming. She noticed a doctor behind the counter and literally threw me to him screaming that he had to save her baby. Somehow he managed to convince my little body to restart itself, but he was so certain that I would crash again and not survive that he traveled with me in the ambulance for the transfer to the Children's Hospital well over an hour away. After stabilizing me and conducting further tests, my parents were asked to attend that meeting. It was at that meeting that the doctors, among the best pediatric physicians in the region, pronounced that I had been without oxygen for far too long and had suffered profound brain damage. My prognosis was officially changed to terminal with a life expectancy of less than 1 year of age, and my parent were told that even if a miracle occurred and I managed to survive longer my brain had been so badly damaged that I would never progress any further than the skills I possessed prior to that night in the Jeep. They strongly encouraged my parents to leave me at the hospital and allow the medical staff there to care for me until my imminent death. I do not know how my parents processed all of the information that was thrown at them, but I went home with them very soon after that meeting. I continued to have apnea episodes, some minor and some severe enough to require full CPR, up until just before my first birthday and then they abated just as originally predicted. As far as the doctor's predictions, my parent's fears dissipated slowly as I met each developmental milestone and then were dismissed when I began to read at the age of 2 1/2. The only remaining signs of any brain damage are gaps in my abilities to process visual-spatial information. There is no medical explanation for how or why I defied every single prediction of the doctors and the word miracle has been used even by those in the medical community. When I was sixteen years old, my mother and I returned to the emergency room where I was first treated on that night when I was 5 months old, and had the opportunity to meet with the doctor who had cared for me and gone above and beyond to ride with me in the ambulance during my transfer to Children's. As my mother began to explain who she was, he instantly remembered that night and offered condolences to her for her loss as he was certain that I had not survived. It was an amazing experience to be able to thank him and to be a living example of the fact that statistics are just numbers on a page and God is never limited by something so small. As a result of having to fight so hard to keep me alive as an infant, not to mention an entire childhood of battles, my family learned to live in each moment with no regrets. I never had any illusions growing up that I was invincible or that lie was a game; I knew from as far back as I can remember at least on some level that every moment was one that according to everything medical science knew I should never have had the opportunity to experience. So far I have now had 26 "bonus" birthdays that my family was told I would never experience (I just turned 27) and 26 "bonus years" of incredible experiences, memories, and love. When I become too caught up in the small things in life, when I lose sight of just how incredibly blessed I am, when I begin to get frustrated over the medical issues that continue in my life, or when I just want to reconnect to the incredible gift that each moment of my life truly is and the responsibility that I have to live my life in every moment with purpose I simply return to that list of dates, times, and the amazing effort that not just a family but an entire community offered up to give me a chance to be alive.