IN THE PICU

Martin text me from the ambulance to let me know that Andrew was handling everything fine, better than me I’m sure!

They took him to the PICU and immediately got him on dialysis. They had to in order to save his kidneys. His white cell count was definitely high alright! 450,000! Normal is 1,000-1,500. When they start the chemo there would be all these dead white cells floating around in his body, it would cause renal failure.

Even with all that was going on with Andrew, he never forgot his attitude of gratitude. He thanked his nurses, dr.’s, techs etc., when they came in to do something for him, that didn’t hurt. He even thanked the janitor when he came into the room to clean it every day. The janitor obviously doesn’t get g much gratitude because he left the room saying, “The boy thanked me, he actually thanked me for cleaning his room!” Andrew made the janitor’s day!
I came up that night. No, I didn’t drive, as you can imagine I was in no state to drive. When I got to the PICU, I was greeted by the most amazing Angel that worked in the PICU! Her name is Gina. She greeted me with a big smile & asked if I was Connie, just her energy alone calmed me down a bit and helped prepare me for what I was going to see. Julie was another amazing night nurse we had in the PICU.
Andrew was hooked up to so many machines & IV’s it was just insane to me! It was hard to take it all in. How could a sore throat and fever lead to all this?? They started chemo immediately. There was no time to make any alternative decisions. Talk about feeling out of control? I have never felt so helpless as a parent, but I would have more moments like these over the next 4 months that’s for sure! All you can do is surrender and trust that these complete strangers know what they are doing. None of our holistic friends had any alternatives for us, we had to take this route for now.

I went back home that night since Martin wasn’t leaving Andrew and we both couldn’t be in the room all night. Plus we weren’t ready to get a room at the Ronald McDonald House i.e. Clown House or RMH. There was more I needed to get done at home, e-mails to handle. Plus I was too angry to stay, I didn’t want to be in Andrew’s room a long time with as angry as I was. I had to work through that first before I spent the night there with Andrew. He is very sensitive to energy and I knew he would pick up on my anger and I didn’t want that. So I just visited again on Thursday.

I decided I would come up and stay on Friday. Martin could get a room at the Clown House. Getting a room there made it official, we were dealing with a seriously ill child. I had to face facts and that was a fact. Our son was diagnosed with a serious illness and I had to suck it up and put on my big girl panties! When I got there, Martin went to the garden area. I talked to Andrew and told him “Muck, for what ever reason, this is happening to you, I don’t get it, but we just need to look at this as a sacred healing journey that me, you and Daddy are on.” He agreed.

We were too evolved for it to be anything else. We are an amazing, loving, FUNCTIONING family who love and adore each other. Martin and I are twin flames and have an amazing relationship. Andrew loved life and was a happy teenager. There had to be a bigger, Higher purpose in all this. I knew Andrew was a phenomenal teacher and maybe this was going to give him the voice he needed to reach more people. It is, just not the way I ever expected it to be.

Martin spent close to 72 hrs at the hospital. It was time for him to get a break & sleep in a bed. Not that being in my bed I did any sleeping.

I come up with a suitcase and guitar to the hospital prepared to stay weeks now. Friday is my first night I stay with Andrew. That ended up being a horrific night!

Andrew was struggling with the dialysis IV in his groin. He wanted to lay on his side so bad but couldn’t because the machine would stop then, even if he slightly went to his side. It was getting clogged as it was from all the hundreds of thousands of dead white cells being cleaned out.

I tried to write in Andrew’s journal, the one I started when I was pregnant with him, but I had to stop. Andrew was struggling to breathe and was moving around so much I had to throw my body across his legs. Before I knew it there was 7 people in the room working on him. I sat on the floor watching as these 8 people worked on him. One was bagging him, he quit breathing. I don’t even remember what the others were doing.

Gina called Martin at the Clown House to come over and had us leave while they continued to work on Andrew. So we sat outside in the garden area for hours. We would spend a lot of time there waiting over the next 4 months. It wasn’t until after 6a.m. that were allowed back in.

Gina wanted to prepare us for what we would see. They had to intubate him which means a machine was now breathing for him as well as a machine acting as his kidneys. Another machine to regulate his temperature and 2 IV poles loaded with machines, plus another machine behind him on the shelf. We were running out of room to sit!

To be honest, it was easier to see him like that then struggling to breathe. We decided after we spent some time with Andrew that we would go back to our room and rest for a few hours. We felt Andrew was in good hands and we could leave together and rest. We wouldn’t be doing that at all over the next few months. We would sleep apart and only see each other in Andrew’s room.

When we went back to Andrew, Gina had gone home and we could tell the difference! Andrew was bleeding from his nose and there was just a gauze on his pillow to catch it. It was running into his ear as well. I couldn’t handle it and asked Martin to make it stop, make the bleeding stop!

Martin is a Reiki Master and one of the things he can stop is bleeding. So he “zapped” him and the bleeding stopped. I cleaned him up.

Our friend Jeremy came by, Andrew is like a little brother to him. Jeremy studies the Kabala & other ancient magick traditions. He came to the hospital locked and loaded with healing crystals, symbols for us to write on every bag of medicine, chemo, and blood products, an 8×10 paper with sacred geometry for behind his bed and statue of AA Michael.

Upon all that Jeremy and Martin were doing energetically, there was also a world wide healing circle held for Andrew at 2:22p.m. There was a total of 3 world wide healing circles for Andrew but the world wide prayers NEVER stopped! Andrew was touching lives around the world! Hundreds of thousands of people knew who my son was and was praying for him!
Andrew would spend the next 4 1/2 days like this. Martin would play his guitar and we would sing to him. We cried trying to get through Let It Be by the Beatles. We played one of his favorite music cd’s, Fairy Of The Woods by Gary Stadler, Gina would talk to Andrew while she worked with his machines, they were always beeping for one reason or another! She talked to the machines too. Gina talked to him while she shaved his face and washed his hair and did his nails. She touched my heart deeply. I started to thank her but I could hardly get the words out from crying. She treated my son as if he was her own. Gina isn’t just a nurse but a true Earth Angel.

STORY CONTINUED

On the 3rd day of intubation they decided to lighten his drugs to start to have him come out of the forced coma. We continued to sing to him John Denver, Beatles songs and play his favorite metaphysical music cds. I continued to talk to him. I had tears streaming down my face as I talked to him. I asked him “Remember Muck? Mommy’s cry and boys like to talk about boogers and farts?” Then an incredible thing happened! He slightly shook his head yes! I was so excited! I ran to his nurse and told her and she said it was normal because he was starting to come out of it. She talked to him but there wasn’t a lot of response. But I got mine!

The next day he was coming off of intubation but they were taking their time. Andrew had woken up, was still a bit groggy but was breathing on his own while STILL intubated! Can you even imagine what that was like? Andrew felt like he was choking. He was definitely coming out of his grogginess because he yelled at me! I was trying to calm him down and tell him they would be taking it out soon. He yelled at me “DO you want me to die?! I’m going to take this out now!”

So I ran out of the room and told a nurse either get him off the respirator or he is going to do it for them! The Dr. wanted to wait a few more hours! They thought he was still using a percentage of the machine to breathe but he was NOT! He was totally breathing on his own. Thank goodness the nurse listened to me. I told the nurse if the Dr. has a problem with this, then she can come and talk to me!

We had to catch Andrew up on the past few days. He was mortified when the chemo nurse came in. I felt so bad for him, he didn’t remember he was already on chemo and it was day 7. We explained that this was the only thing we could do for now.

Andrew was up for 24 hours straight talking! He had to make up for lost time I guess. He was a bit hard to understand as he was still a bit groggy and speech was slurred so that frustrated him. He was talking such profound things most of the time. There was some hallucinations in there as well. The hospital was concerned & scheduled an CAT scan of his brain, but we knew hallucinations were common after a forced coma. Funny, the hospital didn’t know about it! Although in their defense, they did find a small brain bleed with the CAT scan. The fun just never stops when dealing with leukemia.

They also didn’t take into consideration bed sores when putting someone into a coma. You’d think they’d immediately call the skin team as part of the procedure but they didn’t. By the time they did it was too late, he had them. I know they were more occupied on keeping Andrew alive, he was that critical, than worrying about bed sores but it was one more unnecessary thing we had to heal. Andrew ended up with a severe bed sore on the heal of his left foot, a smaller one on the heal of his right foot, his right elbow and 3 small ones on his head that Martin found when doing Reiki on Andrew. So now they added the Skin Team as part of Andrew’s huge team of healers.

Elatia and her friend DeDe came to visit the day he got off intubation. He was just in teaching mode non stop with some hallucinations here and there. I don’t think he was fully in body. It made the day interesting. In between the profound information was Ninjas coming through the window, dancing spiders and some kind of white gel coming from the ceiling I had to wipe off his face. He got irritated with me when I looked confused when he asked me to wipe his face again and I wasn’t wiping the right place. He said “You it saw before, what’s the problem?” I told him, “I was just humoring you Muck, I didn’t see anything.” He was not happy about that!

That night Martin and I bathed him as he continued his teaching with us. He explained how this was the way Kings were bathed in ancient times. It was very sacred and intimate. He talked about how the Universe worked. He was talking dates and times of all the great thinkers and philosophers, he was amazing! I hung on his every word. He was so tapped into Universal Knowledge. I know he didn’t learn all that being home schooled! (Martin will be explaining more what Andrew said here. I don’t remember it all) Martin and I just looked at him in awe as we bathed our son, we knew were in the presence of greatness!

Martin went out to the garden area while I stayed with Andrew. Andrew looked at the TV, which we only kept the meditative music station on, with scenery during the day, but at night it had the cosmos on the screen, and he said that there were 4 Avatars sitting there in the cosmos and they were talking to him giving him information. He described what they looked like, and the information they gave him was way beyond my comprehension. He then looked at me with such confidence and said “Mommy, I know I am an Avatar.” I looked at him and said “I believe you are my Sweet!”

It was after that Andrew said “Mommy, Daddy, life is a game I never want to stop playing!”

Holy Crap! How profound was that coming from a 16yo boy…well, man now, healing leukemia! Martin and I just looked at each other in amazement and started scrambling for pen and paper to write it down. After everything he had been through in less than a week, still hooked up to so many machines, he felt this way! We knew at that moment, that no matter what happened, the 3 of us were on an incredible sacred healing journey.

STORY CONTINUED

Andrew’s girlfriend in So-Cal had sent Andrew a John Denver gold record plaque for Annie’s Song with John’s picture, well, that’s what it was suppose to be anyway. The invoice even said it. Instead it was the John Lennon one with “Imagine.” That was Andrew’s introduction to John Lennon’s work. More on him later.
The following night after Andrew was off intubation, we had family come up to visit. Andrew finally slept a bit during the day. All through the night before he continued to talk. As soon as I thought he had dosed off, away he went off talking again.

Martin brought out his guitar and John Denver song book while we had family there to have a bit of a sing song. That’s what Martin’s family does all of the time. Take every opportunity to sing. It’s an Irish thing.
The room was dimly lit and was just a nice setting for an intimate sing song. What shocked me is that when we sang “Follow Me,” Andrew started to sing right along with us! That was something he never did! He would never sing in front of anyone! I would catch him singing in his room with his head phones on but I would never let him know because I knew he wouldn’t sing anymore! I don’t know why, because he was the one with the voice like an Angel!

Then Martin starts to sing “This Old Guitar.” I look over at Andrew and I can’t tell if he is laughing or crying. I then saw tears and asked “Honey what is wrong?” He said “That is my favorite song of John Denver’s.” Then he proceeds to tell me something so beautiful.

He says, “Mommy, when I took a nap today I had a dream about John Denver. It felt so real! I was at his house in Colorado. We were talking on his front porch, I could feel the breeze on my skin, I could smell the mountain air, I could see how beautiful the scenery was, it was so real!” I told him that it was real! I said “It was more than a dream Honey, it was an actual visitation by John Denver! I went on to explain “that because you honored John so much and loved everything about him, you talked about what he stood for no matter if your friends made fun of you, John wanted to honor you by taking you away for awhile.” As he continued to tell me what happened, Martin continued to play & sing John’s songs, I gently wiped Andrew’s tears of joy.

Andrew went on to say, “Then John took me to the lake behind his house and we sat on logs by a fire as he told me the importance of taking care of the environment. He shared with me the knowledge that the trees and mountains have. We then were back on his front porch again. We decided to go in for some hot chocolate. Mommy, John has a lot of junk food in his cabinets!” We laughed at that. He continued “I used his bathroom before going out on the front porch again with him. When I came out we sat there drinking hot chocolate, talking and he even let me wear his hat. You know the one on his Cd cover. I was so excited he let me wear his hat! But John did something even cooler than that Mommy!” Andrew was getting more choked up as he said, “He wrote and sang a song just for me!” The tears were really flowing from Andrew now as they were welling up in me too! I asked him “Do you remember the words to it” He said “No.” I said, “You will one day, don’t worry.”

Andrew then asked me “Mommy, remember when I told you that John didn’t give autographs?” I said “Yes.” “Well, after he sang me my song, he gave me his guitar that he sang my song with! My guitar is out there somewhere! I know it” I continued to wipe his tears. He said “I feel so wonderful, I really felt like I spent time with John Denver and I don’t want this feeling to ever end!”

I told him that “I believe you really did spend time with John. It was a gift he wanted to give you. When things get tough in here, just go back to that place and that feeling. It will help you get through anything!”

Andrew spent a total of 9 days in the PICU the first time, 6 days on dialysis, 4 1/2 days intubated before he could be moved the 2nd floor. That was a huge deal as nobody thought he was going to make it to the 2nd floor, except for us! It was exciting that he was being moved to the 2nd floor but I was going to miss the nurses we we came to know in the PICU. It is exhausting breaking in new nurses!

Moving On Up!

Our first day on the 2nd floor we had great nurses! We had Shawn and Dawn so I called them the Shawn and Dawn show. Shawn had done stand up comedy before so he was great to have around. We always bantered back and forth. Dawn was a happy person and a joy to have around. They helped make our big move an easy one. They would become some of our favorite day nurses!

While in the PICU Gina told us about 2 very special people that would understand who we are and what we do, they were as “woo woo” as we were! I was so excited to hear that! I know all of the people at the hospital thought we were way out there with our crystals, chanting, symbols on every bag that went into Andrew’s IV, healing circles etc. To hear that there were people at the hospital that would understand who we were was exciting news! They did not disappoint! They became regulars in Andrew’s healing arsenal. Betsy was his massage therapist that he made sure he had scheduled everyday and Adele was his occupational therapist that would do her “thing” with him. We insisted that she do the extracurricular activities that she knew how to do. We trusted them, more importantly, Andrew trusted them, he felt safe talking to them. He looked forward to their visit everyday. So much so he was calling the hospital a hotel. LOL He made sure his massage and energy work was scheduled everyday. Sometimes Betsy and Adele would tag team Andrew. We left them alone with Andrew to do their work on him and Martin and I could spend some time talking. They did high level energy work on him. They were a tremendous blessing to us! We didn’t feel alone having them in the hospital. At least 2 people knew how we worked!

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9 Responses to IN THE PICU

  1. Swati says:

    Connie…how does a parent even go through something like this? And it is still happening, somewhere to some other kid, some other parent. Makes me want to go right back “home” where no one has to go through this. I wish I or someone could do something to make it all right for you again.

    Thank God for Gina…she truly is an angel.

    Sending you so many hugs Connie, I know they won’t help. But I’ll send them anyways.

    Do you go talk to Andrew after each session of writing a chapter like this? I hope you do. Just so you will be in touch with the very life he is, the joy that he is, the love that he is. I hope each time you write a chapter like this you go to your room and hold him and ask him to hold you tight.

    Someone on the ATP board wrote this song for her son who passed away a year ago. Here is the thread: http://angeltherapyboards.com/index.php?topic=3788.0

    The words that felt most to me were:

    I HELD YOU WHEN YOU WERE A BABY
    HOPED TO KEEP YOU FROM ALL HARM
    HELD YOU SWEETLY TO MY BREAST
    HOLD ME NOW IN YOUR HEAVENLY ARMS

    Connie…I hope you take the time to be held in your son’s heavenly arms too, and I hope you feel them around you, comforting you, I hope you hear him humming softing to you and rocking you.

    Lots of love to you Pretty Mama,
    Swati

  2. Lord Horus says:

    I Just wanted to add this in, I dont know if you want it to be part of the book.. but it was that night that I arrived at the hospital that we talked about starting the Website… Thats when we came up with the name Healive… It was supposed to be a play on the words.. Heal & LIve and He’ll LIVE..

    I remember that conversation so well with the three of us sitting around the table in the waiting room snack area.

  3. Leila says:

    (((((Connie))))) sending you more waves of love and gentle hugs.
    Breathe precious Pretty Mamma, breathe. Breathe in Andrews light and may you Know he is with you without a doubt.

    Love,
    Leila

  4. admin says:

    I’m always talking to Andrew, I should be listening more than running my yap tho! I do feel him touching the top of my head when I write. Gina was such an incredible blessing! I am so grateful for her!

    I remember sitting out there in the garden talking about starting a website for Andrew. You came up with healive for Light Workers who are so busy healing, they forget to live! We were throwing around different web addys when you decided to use healive for Andrew. I think we can work this into the book. Andrew must have been intubated for the 3 of us to be out there.

    I do a whole lot of breathing when I write these kinds of stories Leila. It’s still so hard being a LW in a mother’s body! Sometimes the mama gene wins over. :-(

    But I did add the more cooler things that happened in the PICU I’ve been adding to a lot of the posts for the book.

    Thank you all for being here!!!!

  5. Dana says:

    *quote*
    He talked about how the Universe worked. He was talking dates and times of all the great thinkers and philosophers, he was amazing! I hung on his every word. He was so tapped into Universal Knowledge. I know he didn’t learn all that being home schooled! (Martin will be explaining more what Andrew said here. I don’t remember it all)
    *quote*

    Oooo…I can’t wait to read of that!

    I’m not sure what the Universe has in store – but I’m definitely looking into becoming a pediatric oncology nurse after I graduate!

    And how in Sith’s Hell did they let him get bed sores?!?!?! Tis one of the first and most talked about topics we had when I was taking CNA classes! *confuzzled as usual*

  6. Pretty Mama says:

    Yea, I was thinking the same thing Dana, it shoulda been first thing they did when he was intubated was have the skin team come down and tell us what we needed to do to prevent this. Instead it was like the day before he got off intubation when they were called and it was too late he had them. His one heal was still healing, they thought it mayhave gone into the bone! And he still had one on his head that had hair on it so he would pet it like Austin Powers did his cat! LMAO!

    Again, it may have been that he was so critical & that they did expect him to be intubated that many days and when things seemto settle they contacted them, not sure. It was a PIA (pain in the ass) to have yet another thing to heal tho!

    I will say that pediatric oncology is a calling, it’s a life purpose not a job. Only you know if that is what you are called to do. I will say that just about every nurse there (Some I wondered why they were there but only 1 or 2) had a passion for what they do and absolutely love it! I give them so much credit! Someone like Gina is so rare because she is not afraid to love. She takes care of those kids like they are her own no matter how many of them she has lost. She is amazing and I know Andrew felt blessed by knowing her!

  7. Swati says:

    I hope you will be writing in detail with Martin’s help all the profound things Andrew said then. That will be amazing for people to read.

  8. admin says:

    I told Martin he was going to have to fill that part in.

  9. Karen T. says:

    Holy cow! I have been away for 2 days and this has me in tears. I send loving energy to your Mama gene to get through these writings. My Mama gene aches reading this and you lived it…still are living it. God love you!! And yes, get your hugs from your Muck whenever you can.
    Swati…your comment is so beautiful.

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