Be Brave

Processing something traumatic is always tricky. It’s also… well, a process. I wish there was a light switch that you could just flip once the inciting event is over and everything settles down. That would have been great to have after the flooding, after leaving my previous job… and now, after my son was home safe and sound from the ER.

You see, trauma is crafty. Sure, it hides in the brutalities of war or the devastation of a hurricane, but it hides in the mundane, too. This one happened on a random Sunday in March when the sun was shining. It was nice enough that we didn’t think twice to let our four year-old meander around, picking dandelions for a minute or two on the way into church. The kids got to their respective classrooms just fine. They were playful and happy. Something like 30-40 minutes later, one of the other parents came up to us and told us our son was sick. Or was it that he said he was sick? Was acting sick? I genuinely don’t know. Again, he had been acting completely normal all morning, so we were a little confused. But, I got up and headed toward the kiddos’ classes.

I didn’t think scenes like this actually played out in real life.

I rounded the corner to see a small crowd. I heard someone say what nobody ever wants to hear: “He’s not responsive”, or maybe “He’s not responding“… but either way, I managed a “What?!” as I got to where he was. My little guy was being cradled by someone who was crouched, maybe even sitting on the floor. We’re an alabaster family, but I’ve never seen him look so pale. There was no color in his face, nor his lips. His eyes were just barely staying open; we kept having to repeat his name and/ or jostle him a little bit to make sure he didn’t pass out. He would attempt to respond when we asked him questions, but it was barely audible, even just a couple inches from his face. Giving him a little bit of water helped some of the color come back, which was a relief.

His teacher told me he was sitting at a table doing their activity, and he started crying out of nowhere and saying he didn’t feel good. She asked if he wanted to get up and walk around a little, which he agreed to, but he was too unsteady. He didn’t fall or lose consciousness, but came very close. Our first guess was dehydration, especially since the water seemed to be helping a little. At some point during all of this, a good friend of ours offered to run and get my wife.

The order of some of this gets… hazy. I was zeroed in on my son, so time and order and just about everything else outside our little bubble wasn’t registering. Someone had asked me about taking him to the hospital and, if so, whether it would be our own car or an ambulance. Once my wife got to the scene, we decided to have someone call an ambulance. We were able to go back into an empty classroom for some privacy/ breathing room while we waited. Our daughter was in the next room over in her classroom. We knew we could leave her there, at least for a bit, so I called my parents. And that’s when I finally broke down. It’s one thing to see him like this, but another thing entirely to have to tell my parents.

All this time, he hadn’t changed much in either direction. At some point in the classroom, his color started to fade again, so we gave him more water. EMS got to the scene pretty quickly after the phone call, and were incredibly kind. Everyone was. There was only so much they could determine on the scene, of course, but one of them said it was something they call a “near-syncopal event” – when someone comes close to passing out/ fainting, but doesn’t quite do so. They also agreed with us that taking him to the hospital would be the best/ safest course of action.

My parents arrived just as he was being loaded into the back of the ambulance. Seeing them and their reactions to everything, as well as their words of comfort to me, had me in tears yet again. My wife rode in the back with our son while I drove our car behind. After all, I’d driven us to the hospital while she was in active labor, so I have some experience with high-stress commutes.

Being in the ER room was much less chaotic. For the first 45 minutes or so, I laid on the hospital bed with him. He’s not typically a cuddler, but he definitely was then. I don’t think either of us moved much in that span, but I eventually needed to get up, so my wife laid down with him instead. I don’t know how long they laid there before I got her and me some lunch, but when I came back from that errand, he was asleep.

Those first couple of hours in the hospital didn’t bring any answers. His flu/ COVID/ strep test was negative. His bloodwork was normal, and didn’t show any indication of dehydration. We had them go ahead and put in an IV just in case we did end up needing fluids or anything else. The staff were all incredible, and we never felt rushed or pressured into making any sort of decision about whether to head back home or to look into more tests. Neither one of us wanted to leave before we could figure something out, so they ordered a couple of scans based on some areas of the body he said were hurting.

My brave guy not only had an IV placed, but also had to do two separate scans. He did excellent for all of this; it really is incredible sometimes how resilient kids are. I didn’t want him to have to be resilient, though. I didn’t want him to have to be brave. I just wanted him to be okay.

Based on the scans, they deduced that he’d had a vagal response. The Vagus Nerve plays a huge part in a lot of bodily processes, and there’s a lot of different ways a response like this could have been triggered. They found a very likely cause, and treated it accordingly. Coincidentally, even before we got the results back and could do some sort of treatment, he started seeming more like himself again – more talkative, more playful. It was a huge relief, and doubly so once we had an answer we could act on.

All told, we were in that ER for something like 8 hours. I don’t know how many people have had to reinstall a car seat at night in a parking garage, but I don’t recommend it if you can help it. My parents arrived with our daughter just as we were getting back to the car, so everyone was happily reunited!

The very next day, completely unrelated to this emergency situation, this poor boy had his tonsils and adenoids removed, and ear tubes placed. We were relieved we could still go through with the surgeries, since they were pretty important and had also been on the books for about a month. I had just been telling my therapist on Saturday about my anxiety in anticipation of his surgeries… well, after going through the emergency ordeal on Sunday, I didn’t really have enough worry left to give. The procedures were surprisingly quick, and we were able to go back and see him in the post-op area within about an hour.

Judging by how he was acting, you’d never know he’d just been in surgery. He kept wanting to go to the backyard, or play with this or that. We made sure he didn’t overdo it, but let him just kinda follow his whims wherever they took him. The next day, that all caught up with him, so half to 3/4 of it was spent reclining in one room of the house or another. We probably fired up Encanto at least 3 times, but never finished it; you see, if we go back to it after a couple hours, he wants to start over so he can watch the fireworks in the Disney intro.

He continued doing great on Wednesday, but I was scheduled to return to work on Thursday. I was a little surprised at how emotional I felt having to go back, but it had obviously been a very taxing week thus far. Everything still felt like… a lot. Emotional hangover. I made it through those last two days of the work week, and we were able to have a fun night at our local zoo’s seasonal light show on Saturday, which all of us absolutely loved!

Then came Sunday. We were coincidentally going to be visiting our friends’ church, but I was relieved that I didn’t have to return to the “scene of the crime” so soon at our home church. Even so, little guy got upset about something or other (as toddlers do) while we were still at home. His cry sounded almost exactly like the cry he had as he came out of anesthesia, and I instantly started to tear up. It was overwhelming. Sometime that same week at work, I heard someone in the hall ask something like, “Is he okay?”, which didn’t trigger as strong of a response, but still gave me pause. I had similar feelings seeing pictures we took while he was in the ER, or realizing he was going to be wearing the same shirt he’d worn that day – not completely overwhelming, but not exactly comfortable either.

I expressed to my wife how I was bracing myself for returning to our church that upcoming Sunday. I had no idea how I would respond, if at all, having to go back to that same hallway where the kiddos’ rooms are. Or possibly just being in the building in general. As usual, she was incredibly reassuring. When we did make it back, things started off relatively fine. But as I sat there during the sermon, knowing it was getting closer to the time to go pick him up from class, my anxiety kept getting worse. It hit a breaking point when a random child cried, and I started to tear up. This cry sounded nothing like either of my kids’ cries, but it was enough to tip me over that edge. She assured me it was okay if I needed to leave; I got up for some water and a half cry/ half sigh in the men’s room. It felt so incredibly similar to the anxiety attack I had all those years ago, before even starting therapy, when there was a torrential downpour while I was at work. But somehow, sitting in the lobby for a few minutes while service wrapped up helped me regulate. I got up and got the little guy from class with no further incident.

I’d debated asking about a “bonus” therapy session pretty much since the day we went to the emergency room, but all of these trauma responses convinced me it was in my best interest. So, here I am, several hours removed, doing my best to put all of this into words. Doing my best to process all of this fear and anxiety and just plain emotional overload from the past two and a half weeks. And I think it’s helping, but I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.

Until then, I’m going to keep doing my best to be like my son. I’ll do my best to be brave.