Blindsided Follow Up
Home 9 - Throwback
Good ol’ Facebook prompting me to write this blog.
I have meaning to do it because I got emotionally blindsided the other day at a general paediatric follow up.
If you’ve been a follower of Kaydens Story you remember our experience at Waitakeres temporary SCBU. We unfortunately were send there whilst it was under construction and the unit was jammed in the back of the children ward, Rangitira. I fought tooth and nail not to go Waitakere, I cried and pleaded with every NICU doctor and nurse not to send us there. Despite all my efforts, short of protesting by the incubator until they called the police on me, we were shipped off. I’m still angry about it, I truly fought my hardest and knew it was not the best for Kaydens care but I was not heard.
I don’t know how I knew, but I knew that place wasn’t the best for Kayden. They assured me, they promised me the level
of care was high.
In short, we had an incident. Kayden was aspirating on his continuous feed, I suspected the ng tube wasn’t in correctly. I called the nurse for attention, repeatedly. She brushed me and opted to do low priority cares, a nappy change on another baby. I asked again for any nurse to come check, said they should work as a team, they did not.
And then he couldn’t breathe. He went completely blue and I had to resuscitate him.
What if I wasn’t standing there? What if I didn’t know how to stop the feed machine or how to lift him up and do CPR on his back.
It took me yelling and swearing at the nurse to get help.
Needless to say I didn’t leave that day until the wee hours of the morning, drove home exhausted and completely broken. I didn’t trust them. He had survived so much, was on the up and up and they nearly killed him.
I’m not over it.
I realized as I walked through to our appointment last week that there hasn’t been a follow up on that complaint. I also realized how upset I still am over it. I cried as I passed the hallway of hanging butterflies where they nearly killed Kayden. Nearly lost him when he was 10 weeks old and had already survived the worst of it.
I had texted Lee that day “They are going to kill him”. This is not ok. I will be following up.
