{"id":160,"date":"2005-09-08T10:44:53","date_gmt":"2005-09-08T14:44:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2005\/09\/08\/what-difference-a-year-makes\/"},"modified":"2005-09-08T10:44:53","modified_gmt":"2005-09-08T14:44:53","slug":"what-difference-a-year-makes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2005\/09\/08\/what-difference-a-year-makes\/","title":{"rendered":"What Difference A Year Makes"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This morning I had planned on responding to something Will (of Designerblog fame) had passed on to me, but after my visit with my niece in the hospital yesterday, I had to post about that instead. Will – I promise I’ll blog about my “seven’s” tomorrow! <\/P>
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So last night I went to the hospital to visit my niece and sister-in-law. The good news is that my sister-in-law (Heidi) was released from the hospital as a patient and is now able to stay in the room with my niece, Heather. Unfortunately, her feeding tubes are still removed so she’s having to resort to feedings via TPN (which is an all liquid diet going into her stomach via tubes). No food for her. We’re hoping this is temporary until they can install another J and G tube (where she can eat some regular food, too).<\/P>
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My brother was at the hospital as well and I managed to arrive just as Heidi was being released from her room.<\/P>
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But things aren’t going so well for my niece. I went direclty to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit where I found that my niece is in even worse shape. She’s been on a ventilator since her emegency surgery nearly two weeks ago. But her lungs have deteriorated so badly that they’re pumping quick thusts of air into her lungs at the rate of at least one per second! They think she might have some sort of lung disease or fungal pneumonia but can’t determine that until her lungs are strong enough to come off the ventilator – she’s too fragile at the moment.<\/P>
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Anyway, this pumping causes her chest to involunaraily heave up and down. And because the oxygen is pumping so rapidly, they’ve had to use drugs to paralyze her (literally comatose) so that she doesn’t tighten muscles and cause damage to herself (since this isn’t a normal way of taking in and breathing out air). In addition to this massive tube down her throat, she has at least 7 other machines connected to her (to monitor, to administer medications, to feed).<\/P>
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While I was there, my brother was taking pictures of Heather so that he can explain what’s going on to my other niece and nephew who are unable to visit the ICU. My personal take on it is that the photographs will scare the shit out of my niece and nephew because, quite frankly, it scares the shit out of me and I’m 34. It’s terrifying.<\/P>
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This morning, I came in to work and my sister-in-law emailed me the photographs so I can print them for her (in color). Here’s a time line:<\/P>
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Winter 2003 – this is Heather at just about 6 months old. She was a premie, but despite not being able to eat, she looked happy.<\/P>
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September 2004 – this is Heather on her 2nd birthday (one year ago). You can see her feeding tube as she’s in her little wheel chair\/stoller. I believe she’s enjoying a little Patty-Cake. But notice that she’s not smiling. Smiles have become less and less frequent.<\/P>
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September 2005 – these two photos are of Heather last night. Just one year after the last photo was taken. The swelling in her face has gone down, but you can still see the puffiness (especially the eye lids) and the veins being forced to the surface of her neck.<\/P>
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I can’t lie and say these photos don’t disturb me. As a matter of fact, I’m tearing up as I write this. OK – I can’t write anymore. I’ll blog again tomorrow. <\/P>
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 <\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning I had planned on responding to something Will (of Designerblog fame) had passed on to me, but after my visit with my niece in the hospital yesterday, I had to post about that instead. Will – I promise I’ll blog about my “seven’s” tomorrow! So last night I went to the hospital to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}