Aria's Life in Review: Day 46 - August 14, 2014

This day. . .this day was a hard day.  This morning I walked into the kitchen to find Bennett talking on the phone to someone.  Apparently my phone had rung while I was in the other room and he had picked it up.  We have been trying to teach him to bring the phone to us instead of answering it himself, but that small act of him answering the phone may have kept Aria with us a few days longer.  

When I took the phone from him, I saw it was Primary Children's.  This was not unexpected, because they would usually call once a day with an update.  So I figured that's why they were calling.  I could see that Bennett could have been talking to them for as long as a minute, so I was embarrassed and started apologizing to our NP who was on the other end.  That's when she interrupted and told me that she was actually calling because Aria had coded (flatlined) and had called to find out if we wanted them to go against our written wishes and use extreme measures to save her, or to let her go. . .however, by the time I picked up the phone from Bennett, their efforts at stimulating her body to respond has started to work, and her heart had started beating again.  At that point she had to get off the phone quickly to assist, but made it clear that it looked like we were okay for now.

I was absolutely sick the next couple hours until we could get up to the hospital.  Because Aria had already had all kinds of crazy life-saving measures taken the day she was born, we didn't want her to have to go through that pain again knowing it was just a temporary fix, so we had decided to just let her control when she'd return to heaven.  If I had answered the phone right away while she was flat-lined, I probably would have told them to make sure she was comfortable and let her go, and she'd be gone.  I really think that this was all part of a master plan to alert us that we were at the end, and give us a couple more days to say goodbye to her.

It's crazy how fast she suddenly turned.  Just the day before, we had met with our primary nurse and the NP who wanted to talk to us about how well Aria was doing with her oxygen and that maybe we should try moving to the nose tubes again.  Of course, once she coded, nobody was talking about that anymore.

Those last couple of days were special and heartbreaking at the same time.  As soon as we got to her that day after she crashed, it was clear there was a change.  Those last few days she never seemed fully herself and seemed to just hover between life and death, just barely hanging on.

That evening I was supposed to go to a Girl's Night with some girls from our old neighborhood.  I was actually really looking forward to it, but of course after Aria crashed I had to tell them I was out.  Late that night one of them dropped by a bag full of headbands and this cute bracelet!  They had planned to give them to me at the party.  They told me pick out my favorites and give the rest to the NICU (the source for my idea later on to collect headbands at her funeral, I just thought that was the best idea!)  This pink flower headband remains one of my favorites.  Before having Aria, I always thought pink was too cliche for a girl but I had to admit it looked cute on her!