We almost lost our son today

I write this with tears still shaking over 12 hours later. What started off as a normal day, and a routine procedure turned into a nightmare of grand proportions. The kind of thing you hear from a friend of a friend that knew someone. Not me.


Today we were having Judah's adenoids and tonsils removed and tubes put in his ears. The surgery went fine and he was in very good spirits,

I waited with the other kids as Abby has a form of walking pneumonia and they don't allow kids in the surgery center. Gary went in with Judah and we waited outside passing time. I called and they said it went well, then I called Gary again and I heard the nurse in the back ground say it would be another 20 minutes as they had to give him more medicine to re sedate him as he was thrashing about and they needed to suction him. I though that was weird but was still confident all was well.


About 15 minutes later Gary said he was ready to go and put the kids in the car. I did, he carried Judah out and put him in the car seat. He was knocked out completely. The doctors said he was fine and just sleepy. We drove home 30 minutes and he seemed fine. We put him to bed thinking he would wake in a few hours. As Gary was tucking him and sitting by his side and I was getting the rest of the kids in the house things took a sinister turn. Gary called me into his room and asked to get a suction bulb. When I got there and saw him I thought something was wrong. We were only home for 5 minutes before I was trying to call our friend who is a paramedic. My other friend came over to see him and I told Gary to call the doctor, the medical staff was not too concerned. Everything in me felt something was wrong. Things progressed from bad to worse, his temperature dropped to 94 degrees and he was struggling to breathe with retracted breathing, deep gurgling and his lips were looking pale as well. I called the doctor again and spoke with him personally he wasn't worried but wanted to know if he was responsive, I ran to his room and Judah was even worse and he wasn't waking, the doctor told us to call 911. Instead Gary put his limp body in the car and took him to the local fire department 2 minutes away, they immediately began to work on him giving him Narkan, the medicine that stops the effect of morphine. They rushed him away in an ambulance trying to get him to respond. So much of this is blurry and I can't remember how it all goes, the ENT who did the surgery was calling me and the ambulance and my husband. I asked him while trying not to hyperventilate if Judah was going to die and he told me "I don't know"

Eventually all of the Narkan took affect and he started to respond coming out of the deep affect of the narcotic. My dear friend Tara took me to the hospital and my other dear friend Malieka whisked my other two kids away, while my other dear friend Grace assured me he would be okay. I was so scared, I felt I was loosing my son. Every fiber in me felt him leaving. It was like I put one toe over the line of life and death. My entire body reacted I wanted to throw up and faint and hyperventilate and hold my breath all at the same time. I couldn't talk or understand hardly anything that was going on. My girlfriends held me together and guided me through.

I am so confused. I get to the hospital and he is surrounded by nurses and paramedics. They are watching him very close and he is hooked up to tubes and monitors. They say he is okay and was responding but they are going to keep him for a while. Right away I can see he sleeping but his breathing was mostly normal. I just needed him to wake up. Eventually he did and was able to nibble on a Popsicle and have few sips of Gatorade. I was told he had an overdose of morphine and his respiratory system was shutting down.


I poured tears over him and held him. Gary said it was horrible to see the paramedics go into emergency mode, he didn't respond the first time to the drugs and they kept up. I am glad I didn't see that.


Gary asked the doctor if he would have just "come out of it" and he said, not necessarily. they explained that if we had not got him in when we did he would have just stopped breathing all together.


I am so happy he is okay, it is 10:37 pm his surgery was at 9:00 am and he is still not recovered from the narcotics, he woke up long enough to eat a Popsicle and smile for us and now he is sleeping again. I am so mad, so confused and I want to know what happened. I have few details that I need to find out but I know he was released way to early and when the doctor called tonight there was some defenses going up with him. I will write tomorrow about the details that I have when I can sort my head and get the phone records together. Someone did something they shouldn't have. Can someone tell me if it is normal to give a child under morphine Narkan to wake up after surgery? or do they or should they allow them to come back slowly on there own by removing the drug or proper dosing? I was told they gave him a moderate amount of morphine, and that it was normal for his size. This may be true and he may have had a reaction but why in the world would they release him so soon? Obviously he was having a reaction either by accidental overdose or by sensitivity. The big thing I am concerned about is that they told Gary he woke up and was struggling as they were trying to suction him so they resedated him, the doctor told me a few hours ago that his nurse misunderstood and told Gary the wrong thing, that he actually wasn't waking up so they gave him a dose of Narkan, they said he was responsive and met the requirements to be released. The doctor told the nurse to release him after 45 minutes but I think it was more like 20 minutes after that dose of whatever it was they gave him, either they lied and resedated him or they gave him Narkan because he was having a reaction, or the did resedate him and then gave him narkan to pull him out of it, but why didn't they tell us? He was discharged under narcotic overdose. Can anyone shed any light on this? Something is not right.

This was a day I was going to share on this blog, I took pictures to document my little boys first surgery and to keep for him when he was older. I looked at these pictures later and realized these could have been the last pictures I had of him. It was a chilling thought.On the way home from surgery we thought he was just sleeping.On his way to the operating roomWhile we were waiting out side in the courtyard.



This morning on the way to the surgery. He was so excited to get a Popsicle.