Thursday, March 16, 2006

Losing Alexander 3-16-06

THURSDAY, MARCH 16, 2006 10:48 PM, CST
Alexander passed away today. Craig called me from the hospital at 11-ish and told me that Alex's chest x-ray had come back better (his right upper lobe was cloudy last night) and that he had one blood pressure dip and they got it back up.

About 10 minutes later I got a phone call from a nurse saying Alex had taken a turn for the worse. After running in my pajamas through the snow to the hospital I walked into his room and there were many doctors and nurses. I asked if he was coding, and they said yes. A couple ofo his doctors took Craig and I to another room and said that they were waiting on the results of an echo and x-ray. We all knew they wouldn't show anything that could be fixed, Dr D was even tearing up. They said to give them 5 minutes and Craig and I went to call some family.

We came back into his room and as expected they told us that the tests hadn't revealed anything. We went to his bedside and told them to stop chest compressions. We kissed him and told him we loved him and it was time to go.

The staff was wonderful. We got to hold him right away and after a few minutes I asked them to please take the breathing tube and chest tubes out, we wanted to see him without all of that junk for the first time since the day he was born. A staff member of the Ronald Mcdonald house brought the kids up.

We all made handprints and wrote a little message to Alex on the posterboard, the kids all held him and said thier goodbye's. They let us stay as long as we wanted.

We got to bathe him and dress him in one of the outfits we had bought for him, they made a plaster mold with his hands holding our fingers and his feet. They made the whole thing extremely special and as easy as possible for us and although this is probably the hardest day of our lives, we will always cherish the love and sincerity of the staff at U of M. I know his caregivers loved him and allowed us many nights of sleep because we trusted them.

Thank you everyone for the outpouring of love and prayers you've sent. Alex definitely fought and is the smallest yet strongest person we have ever met. And we are very proud of be able to call him our son, even if God needed him more than we do.


UPDATE: The services for Alexander will be held on Tuesday March 21. Veiwing will be at 9am and service at 11am.

If anyone would like to donate in honor of Alexander, please do so to the Children's heart foundation at

http://www.childrensheart.org

which will use your money to further research ways to help kids with congenital heart defects.

or to the Ronald Mcdonald Charities at http://www.rmhc..org

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