Merciful

Putting This OffdeviantART newbies, go over here for my welcome message:

Everyone else, buckle up for the feel trip. I haven't put up a personal journal in a while and some serious shit has been going down. Trigger warning for the saddest thing ever.
My third nephew, Carson, was born on September 11th with no issues. The next day, he began to have trouble breathing and was taken to the Arkansas Children's Hospital by helicopter. ACH is one of the best pediatric centers in the country, so if they say it's bad, it's bad.
The first night.
ACH put him on a ventilator to help him breathe. I don't know all the details, but I know his blood sugar dropped and then spiked way too high, then dropped again, and his blood pressure has had issues as well. There have been tremors and seizures. He was kept more or less in stasis on the ventilator for three days.
After the waiting period, doctors began to wean him off some of the support system to see what he could do on his own. He breathed

You may remember this journal entry from back in September. You may want to read it first for additional context.

Robin and Trey (my brother), have been more or less living at the hospital since September. Trey has been back and forth, but Robin has been there near constantly to be close to Carson. They keep everyone updated with things through Facebook. Yesterday, there was a big meeting with a lot of doctors. Today's Facebook post was not a good one.

The hospital has, more or less, given up. They don't believe Carson will ever get any better, and he can't stay in the hospital forever. They will be sending him home soon, essentially to die. Instead of summarizing, here is what Robin put up:

We had a big meeting at ACH yesterday. The attending, Carson's neurologist, 2 APNs, the social worker, the discharge planner, and a dr and a specialty nurse from the pal care team. Up until yesterday we were excited because we thought that Carson would be coming home bc he was better.. Bc he was WELL enough to come home. That's not the case at all apparently. He's coming home because he can't stay in the hospital forever. They don't really think he will get any better.

They asked us to decide if we want a DNR in place and they discussed what to do if we woke up and found him no longer alive and what to do if his siblings are home to make that the least traumatizing we possibly can for them. He is coming home with palliative care and they will help with that issue if/when it happens. I was also told that it was totally okay if I wanted to take his monitor off. That monitor is absolutely the only way to tell if he is choking until he turns colors. Especially if he is sleeping. There are no other signs. It had never crossed my mind that it was an option. And I had to fight to get a monitor. They weren't going to send us home with one. I have absolutely no intentions of taking that off of him. But if the alarm doesn't wake me up, or he manages to get it off, or it malfunctions in some way, he will most likely be gone.



I got to see the little guy for the first time three days ago. They only allow two people at a time in the NCU, and you have to sign in, wipe down your phone, and wash your hands. The infants there absolutely cannot handle getting sick. Consequently, if you so much as sneeze, Robin isn't letting you in her house. There's a 72 hour ban if you've been sick recently.

I'm not sure when he's going home - I thought it was in two or three weeks, but it sounds like it will be a lot sooner.

Abortion is the one political issue I will absolutely not compromise on - I'm pro-life, and there is nothing you can say to me that will make me think different. Even if we'd all known things would turn out this way, I know Robin would have had the baby. Greater miracles have happened before

That said, the right to die is a more complicated grey area in my opinion, hence the title of this journal. I doubt I would pull the plug as long as the little guy is still fighting, but don't necessarily disagree that it might be merciful to do so in the end.

Robin and Trey plan to have family portraits made as soon as humanly possible, and will try to have as much of a normal a life as they can, for Carson and his brother, for as long as they can.