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This is 40: The Birthday From Hell

Day 0: Thursday Evening

Finish up work on Thursday — the eve of my 40th birthday — and start to feel excited: Kate is putting Milo down, I’ve got almost no meetings at work the next day and grandma is watching Milo in the morning, so I can get a lot of focused work in, maybe play Frisbee at lunch and bring Daisy, finish up work and then head to dinner with Kate’s family to a new spot in town I’ve been wanting to try. Kate’s family is unparalleled in their birthday celebration abilities, so I know it’s going to be a good time.

9pm rolls around and my stomach starts to feel weird. Dinner wasn’t anything crazy — I had leftover pasta, Kate had leftover chicken, and we shared some broccoli — so maybe lunch wasn’t sitting right with me. Try not to think about it, and just focus on relaxing before heading to bed around 10ish. But things get a little worse, and a little worse… and I realize this starts to feel like the precursor to hurling. Spewing. Ralfing. I feel hot and I start salivating. I head to the bathroom out of an abundance of caution, and 10 minutes later I emerge having thrown up. The good news is that I feel better — my temperature seems to have leveled out and I don’t feel weird, so I write it off to food poisoning and tell Kate I’m heading to bed. I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow, excited that after only “one sleep” as we tell the kids, it’ll be my birthday.

Day 1: Friday, Birthday Day

I wake up at about 1am, and as usual look around groggily to assess the situation. Milo is in his bassinet sleeping away, but Kate isn’t in bed yet… she probably just fed him, put him down, and is prepping for bed herself. I’m still feeling a little weird, but the kind of weird you can write off to the fact that you just threw up a couple hours ago, so I don’t dwell on it. In the distance, I make out something concerning: Kate seems to be throwing up now. That narrows the cause down to bad broccoli… like real bad considering we only ate it 4 hours or so before it started affecting us. I wait until she’s done and get up to go see if there’s anything I can do, but no. Kate hasn’t been able to give Milo his nighttime feed yet, and I tell her to not worry about it, lets see how far he goes without it, and when he wakes up I’ll handle it tonight — I’m feeling good enough to sign on for that. We agree to head to bed to ride out the food poisoning wave, and will see each other on the other side. That wave wakes us each up a few more times during the night to take its toll on us.

Milo lets me sleep until 7:30 today — a great birthday present — but my body wakes me up around 6 and I find a text from Granda reporting that she spent all night throwing up too, so she can’t watch Milo. Food poisoning is no longer the culprit, we’re dealing with a flu bug. Immediately start to freak out about Milo — his balloon catheter procedure is scheduled for Tuesday, and we’ve been told only about 5 times in the past 24 hours that if he shows any signs of sickness beforehand they would postpone. We can’t postpone, July is insane with activity. Tally that worry in my head and move on: there are bigger fish to fry at the moment. I assess how I feel and while I’m not feeling nauseous, I’m dead tired, despite getting nearly 8 hours of sleep. I make the decision to call in sick to work, so my rare day of being able to get uninterrupted, focused work goes out the window. No big deal, I’ve only got about a half-dozen things I could’ve knocked out today.

I get a bit more sleep until Milo wakes up at 7:30, then we get up together and our routine starts. He’s showing no signs of sickness, so that’s good. I feed him and then put him down on the play mat for some awake time. He’s happy as can be, but I can barely stay awake so I just grab a pillow and lay on the floor next to him. I try to entertain him when he starts to fuss a little, but I barely have the energy. Nap time comes around and that’s even harder, but I power through it. Rinse & repeat until Kate wakes up, but she can barely make it out of bed. The flu hit me like a tiny Fiat, but it’s hit her like a semi truck. She’s completely out for the count. She apologizes for not being able to take Milo, I tell her there’s nothing she can do and tell her to rest. Put another worry on the tally list that if Kate’s recovery takes too long, I’m not sure how we’ll pack up and get to LA for Milo’s upcoming heart testing on Monday and surgery on Tuesday. Panic level rises ever so slightly, which is a great time to have on your birthday.

Kate’s sister offers to take Milo, but she can’t drive up to get him and we’re in no shape to drive him down. Kate’s dad puts on his usual hero cape and saves the day, taking Milo away so we’re able to get some rest. We capitalize on the opportunity: we literally stay in bed all day. I go in and out of sleep for hours at a time, but Kate isn’t so lucky. Her nausea keeps her up so she just lays in bed feeling miserable. Neither of us eat, we don’t really talk, and we’re too tired to entertain ourselves on our phones. But I get a lot of sleep, so that’s a small victory.

We make the call to postpone the birthday dinner. I get the standard birthday notes and texts, but I’m almost too tired to even respond. The rest of the day is a blur, we eventually get Milo back and are able to keep him on his normal schedule. I make Kate and I some bone broth which I’m able to eat, but Kate can’t even touch. She tells me she doesn’t see how she can handle Milo tonight, and I tell her not to worry, I’ll take both the night and morning shifts, she just needs to focus on sleeping. Milo cooperates for the most part, and so we sleep.

Day 2: Saturday

More of the same. Kate is still pretty out for the count, and I upgrade from bone broth to a smoothie that seems to keep me full for most of the day. Today is the baseball game Kate’s dad’s company is sponsoring, and our nephew is throwing out the first pitch. I feel like I’m going to be able to make the game, so I start planning for it. I don’t want to leave Milo with Kate so she can get as much rest as possible. The day crawls by, the smoothie I ate keeps reminding me that I ate it and that that could’ve been a mistake, but I can hold it down. By the time I need to get ready for the game, I decide I’m just too tired to handle it, and I back out of going — another defeat on this birthday weekend.

Milo still isn’t sick, so we’re still on for traveling down to LA, but as our Sunday departure time closes in Kate and I get more and more worried we’re just not going to be able to muster the strength to make it happen. But we just keep trying to get more sleep and get more calories into us to help our bodies recover.

Milo mostly cooperates, and I tell Kate I’ll handle both the night and morning shifts again. It’s tiring with the flu recovery, but not painfully so. Our dog Daisy starts to go stir crazy, and we remember our “first child” needs attention too.

Before I get to bed, I text with Kate’s dad and sister — they’re going to take Milo in the morning and then come over to help us pack and get out of the house tomorrow, which is an absolute game changer. After texting for a bit, Kristen calls me and we chat for a bit to firm up the plan, and I feel relieved talking through it with her. Before we hang up, she tells me how sorry she is this happened on my birthday and that we’ll celebrate again after Milo’s surgery. It all just hits me: the cancelled birthday, the fatigue of the flu, the guilt of letting down Milo and Daisy and not being able to take care of them the way we want to, Milo’s impending surgery, the risks… and I try to keep it together on the phone but I start to tear up. I’m able to get off the phone before I start completely crying as the sheer weight of the 5 days that I’m right in the middle of hits me with all of its full force. Everyone’s asleep, it’s quiet, and I’m alone, so I just lay on the couch for a bit and let it happen before I get myself up and head to bed.

Day 3: Sunday

I wake up feeling better than the day before. Milo lets me sleep until 7, a small gift among the chaos that’s been going on. We have our nice morning together: milk for him and coffee for me. Before I know it, Kate’s dad arrives to take Milo again — but instead of resting, I go into full blown packing mode, just hoping that when Kate gets up she’ll feel good enough to make the 3.5+ hour drive down to LA for Milo’s heart procedure. I run around the house like a madman — albeit a quiet one — getting everything that I can ready for the trip.

Kate gets up, she’s feeling better. Certainly not 100%, but finally good enough be up and about and doing things. Milo and Kate’s dad & sister come over about 1pm and we all frantically pack up a portion of our lives into the car and get ready to leave. Our target departure time was 3pm, but we don’t actually leave until around 6pm. We make it to Glendale at about 10pm with Milo fast asleep in the carseat. Now we frantically but quietly unpack in the room: the Snoo, the milk bottles, the frozen breast milk, changing stuff… and a single suitcase for us of course. We get everything as set up as it needs to be before getting Milo down and then we collapse into our bed close to midnight… but we rest easier knowing we’ve made it to LA.

Day 4: Monday

I wake up continuing to feel better from the Birthday Flu™️. Milo and I have a good morning and go get breakfast in the hotel lobby — everyone knows the best scrambled eggs are hotel scrambled eggs. Kate is able to sleep well, and she’s continuing to feel better as well, so that’s definitely a plus. We get ourselves and Milo ready to head to Children’s Hospital of LA for his cardiologist appointment to see if his numbers show he needs a procedure to address his aortic stenosis. Kate and I are both nervous of what we’ll find out, but we also are expecting that the procedure will be needed, so we’ve been preparing for some time.

We navigate Los Angeles to get to CHLA, try to figure out the half-valet half-self-parking situation in the CHLA parking garage, get lucky and find an open spot, and hustle our way into the hospital, arriving to check in to our appointment about 10 minutes late. Milo gets an echocardiogram and we wait for the doctor to review the tests and come talk to us. He arrives and tells us that Milo’s numbers are still “on the fence” like they were last time, but he sees his heart function is starting to adapt negatively to the stenosis, and this is a sign that things will probably start to get worse quickly, so he recommends we do the procedure as scheduled tomorrow. Kate and I ask a million questions and ultimately agree to go forward with the procedure.

We knew it was coming, but the reality of the situation still hits us like a bus. We drive home in relative silence for some time, individually processing everything that just happened and everything that is about to happen. The procedure is scheduled for 8am but we have to arrive at 6am, so we focus on planning out how all that is going to work.

We get back to the hotel, I try to do some work, and eventually we agree that soup is just about all we can handle for dinner, so I go find some. I go to sleep early in order to wake up to give Milo a feed at 4am — he can’t have Milk less than 4 hours before the procedure. Kate handles putting him down, and we all try to get sleep before the big day.

Day 5: Tuesday

I get up at 3:45am to feed Milo, then try to go back to sleep at 4. Probably get 30 minutes of sleep before we wake up at 5:30 to make the 15 minute drive to the hospital

Milo right before heading into surgery, happy as a clam

Check in, give insurance info for the thousandth time, head to a waiting room. Get tests done, go to a new waiting room. Wait. Wait. And wait. And then wait some more. They’re running late — the surgery was supposed to be at 8 but it’s pushing 9:30. We wouldn’t normally care but it’s now been 5.5 hours since Milo ate, so he’s getting increasingly fussy as time goes on.

Finally they come to get him. Only one of us are allowed into the pre-op area, so Kate is the one to take him back. Kate says Milo smiled at each and every member of the surgery staff.

The surgery is supposed to take 3-4 hours, so we rush back to the hotel to pack up and then rush back to the hospital to make sure we’re back before it’s over. We sit in the family area on our phones, trying to distract ourselves from the nervousness running through our minds.

We get some updates along the way. The first says he’s out from the anesthesia, the second lets us know the catheter is in place and going well, and the third lets us know the procedure is finished and “he’s fine”… a statement that doesn’t really leave us feeling like everything went perfectly. Soon our doctor arrives and gives us all the details: the procedure went as expected, he tried a small balloon but it didn’t impact the stenosis enough, he stepped up by 0.5mm and that caused the stenosis to be completely gone, but moderate leakage was introduced in his heart. This was the news we didn’t want to hear: moderate to severe leakage means that Milo will most likely need his valve replacement — open heart surgery — in 1-3 years instead of the ideal 4-10, and that means he’ll need more of them as his body grows. This is the ultimate combination of great and not-so-great news. Kate starts going down all the paths this leads to, thinking through what it means for Milo, but my mind doesn’t work that way so I listen but don’t contribute much in that moment.

The plan was to always put Milo in the NICU after the operation, but with the moderate leakage the game plan changes quite a bit. He’s intubated and put on a breathing tube, with the aim of taking all the “load” off of his heart and body so they can observe how his heart reacts to this new condition. They expect he’ll handle it fine given he’s been strong and his body has adapted well to everything so far, but they want to be careful and absolutely sure.

Once we’re alone with Milo and I get a chance to see him hooked up to everything, that’s when I lose it. For him to be so little and have to go through so much, it really hits me hard. We talk to him, hold his hand, sing to him… it feels simultaneously important and futile given that he’s still on heavy anesthesia. The two of us get settled in a hospital room meant for only 1 person to sleep in, so we plan on taking shifts sleeping just so we both try to get a little rest. I’m first to try to sleep around my normal early bedtime and get about 4 hours, then Kate gives it a try from about 2am to 6am.

And that’s where I find myself now — in a hospital recliner trying to do something even remotely productive like catch up on work or play ToTK on my Switch, but all I can do is think about the hell the past 5 days have been. I turned 40 while throwing up with the flu. Kate and my anniversary will be spent in a hospital room severely sleep deprived and worried about Milo. We don’t even have Daisy around to help us cope. We’ll get through this and we’ll survive & thrive, but this will be a week I can’t wait to leave in the rear view mirror and get back to normal life.

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