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(26 1/2 weeks)
Tuesday PM, 9-10-02
At around
9:30
or
10:00pm
, Dr.
Hussein came in to tell us that in the course of the past few hours, Joshua had
coded (almost died) 3 times and had to be resuscitated.
He wanted us to be aware of that and to ask if we wanted them to continue
to keep resuscitating him or if we felt it was time to let him go.
Jeffrey
and I
felt, after talking at length to the doctor, that it was time to let little
Joshy go. I was still pretty heavily
sedated, but aware of the magnitude of what was happening.
Jeffrey
made phone
calls to family members and to Shelley and Rich and Rick and Gordon.
We asked them to come to the hospital as soon as they could because we
were losing Josh and that the doctors didn’t think he was going to make it
through the night. My mom was
already in
Rhode
Island
and on
pain medication herself and was crushed that she couldn’t come back to CT.
My Dad, my brother Richard and his wife Jolene, my sister Michelle,
Shelley, and Gordon all came to UCONN immediately.
Before they arrived, the nurse wheeled me down to the NICU in a
wheelchair. I was extremely nauseous
and vomited right before scrubbing and entering the nursery.
I continued to be extremely nauseous and dizzy and they gave me a
reclining chair to sit in while we waited for our family and friends to arrive.
The NICU nurses were as accommodating as they could be and gave us as
much privacy as they could in the room. We
were each able to hold Joshua and to kiss him and touch him and take pictures of
him before he passed away. I don’t
remember many details…except that I said “It’s OK Joshy, you can go
now”…I wanted him to know we were loving him enough to truly let him go.
Jeffrey
and I went
back to the room while my sister and Shelley stayed in the NICU to watch them
get Joshy’s footprints.
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