When Bear was two days old he stopped breathing,
once at home and two more times in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
The EMS crew were able to resuscitate him while I sat near and watched in horror.
We got him to the hospital and there his throat and airway was cleared of the excess mucus that seemed to plague him since his birth.
When he was finally released from the hospital I took him home and didn't take my eyes off him (morning, noon and night) for two days... when I did finally sleep it was with one eye open...this went on for a long, long time.
I replayed often the scene where I was nursing him, putting him up on my shoulder to burp and the feeling of him stiffening in my arms.
I saw over and over and over how he looked when I pulled him from me and turned him around.
How his eyes bugged and his mouth gaped.
And his skin turned bluer and bluer...
I remembered shaking him and screaming for his dad.
and how we called for help.... how lucky we were that the help was only two short blocks away in the form of a fully staffed fire house.
We waited for what seemed like an hour for EMS to show up, records later showed it was less than two minutes after my call.
The dispatcher stayed on the line with me and in a reassuring voice told me over and over "they are on their way, hang on honey, they are right up the street, hang on, they are on your porch, open the door..."
In between those words she told me to instruct Daddio how to help Bear breathe, how to keep him alive until the experts could arrive.
I screamed the details to Daddio who had Bear upside down, beating on his tiny back.
The very worst night of my life.
I remember the young man in his heavy, tan colored firefighting uniform rushing with my baby cradled in his arms hurrying toward the running rig, with me right behind him.
One of them boosted me up and into the ambulance by the seat of my pants...and onto a bench where I would watch them save Bear over and over.
I glanced out the window as we pulled away from our house, I saw Daddio running for the car and my neighbor Jean standing in the street, hands clasped in prayer, tears running down her face.
This morning this memory came back to me.
So intense that I almost vomited.
Fox2 News reported Venus Jester, a grandmother from Detroit, tried to do everything the dispatcher told her to do when her 2 month old granddaughter stopped breathing..
Help wasn't two blocks or 1.5 minutes away...
It took Detroit EMS TWENTY FIVE MINUTES to get to her home.
Of course, it was too late.
Baby Brielle couldn't be revived.
Detroit doesn't have enough ambulances to serve it's people.
Too many are in poor mechanical shape.
Too many need to be replaced.
Of course money is tight here in Detroit.
Chalk full of crooked, pocket filling politicians and county officials, county and city wide misuse and abuse of funds, half assed mechanics in charge of half assed repairs and an arm's long list of others who should be held accountable for the death of this child.
"I did all I could do" sobbed Brielle's grandmother.
I fantasize all kinds of horrible tortures befalling those responsible.. none though, could possibly be as bad as the twenty five minute wait must have been for a mother and grandmother forced to wait and sit by helplessly all alone and unable to help... as their baby girl died.
Please remember them in your prayers.
On a side note, no fault is placed or should be placed on the shoulders of the Detroit EMS team... they do the best they can do with what they have to work with.
Please also remember them in prayer... I can't imagine how they must suffer as well.
Friday, January 20, 2012
5 comments:
Some bloggers write "gimme me some love".... as far as I'm concerned, I'd love some love, but I'd even take some hate, some expressions of your disgust, your outrage, mild irritation, sheer joy...whatever, I can take it, honestly I can. Just please (please) leave a comment or two and let me know what you think. Merci.
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Thank you for sharing this story. Horrible as it is, people need to know.
ReplyDeleteUGH! That is awful. I'll be praying for Brielle's family.
ReplyDeleteHugs and kisses Jessi and Kimi, I appreciate your thoughts and readership.
ReplyDeleteKoby, thank you for putting the blame exactly where it belongs. My nephew is a medic for the City of Detroit and while he and his coworkers save lives every day there are times when they lose some and the hardest (and the cause of many sleepless nights) are the children.
ReplyDeleteThey are disgusted with the state of the rigs, with the politics and with the lack--of funding, authority and willingness to help.
It is a sad situation indeed and one that will only change if people continue to fight.
You know me as needless2say.
Thanks for the visit and the comment N2S... I appreciate it.
ReplyDeleteSmooches for your nephew, my nephew just finished school to become an EMS technician.