AUSTIN - Heather D Anglebrandt (grave mercy TXT) 📗

This story is about my son Austin. If you met him you’d think he was just like any normal boy. He finds his way into everybody’s heart. He has recently been getting into a lot of trouble at school and at home. He has been diagnosed ADHD and ODD. This is a bad combination. The doctor has put him on medication to focus him and it seems to be doing a great job. He is a very smart child he only has too much going on in his head at once. I know there are a lot of people against pills for children but then again there are people that are against spanking too. I believe I ‘m doing what is best for him and debating with everyone who is oppose to medication will have to wait till my next book because that is a whole other can of worms. Back to my son Austin, I guess to tell you his story I must start before there was an Austin. At the age of 21 I had been married for two years and already had two little girls. In June of 2002 I found out I was pregnant. I was happy, although it was not planned; it was part of the plan. My husband David and I wanted to have our children young. I was fortunate to be able to be a stay at home mom. We had a plan. If this baby was a boy we would be done, then when he got into school I’d go back to school. Shortly after finding out I was pregnant I started having pains in my abdomen. The doctor told me that it was my gull bladder. The problem was nobody would take it out till the baby was born. The doctor controlled my pain the best he could. At the end of July we had a family vacation planned with my mother and siblings. I didn’t want to back out and disappoint them. We took the two girls and drove for four hours to go camping. The next day we went canoeing, that didn’t work out so well. My youngest daughter was 14 months old at them time and didn’t sit too well in the boat. She hated her life jacket. That year it was dry so the river wasn’t very deep most of the way. I started having pains and my husband had to row and stirs while I held my daughter and hunched over in pain in the front of the canoe. My family did the best they could to help but it got worse. I don’t remember a lot about the rest of the night. I know I was sick for a whole day I threw up, I was sweating and I was disoriented. Finally my husband couldn’t take it anymore and took me to the local hospital. They told my husband that if they didn’t do surgery he would lose me and the baby, but if they did the surgery I’d lose the baby. It wasn’t a hard choice but it was hard to handle. The surgery took six hours and nothing went right. I had to stay in that hospital while my mother took my girls and went back home. The doctor told my husband and me that the baby made it but he suggested we abort because of the problems it could have. I guess the surgery could cause major problems and my husband decided no matter what was wrong with the baby we would handle it. The doctor advised against it but we stood by our decision. I continued my follow up care closer to home because when I was discharged from the hospital I still had drainage tubes coming from my belly. I had to empty them myself and after being able to eat I gained weight quickly. By the time they removed the tubes my skin had grown closed around it and it was very painful. So if it is true that a baby feels what the mommy does Austin was in pain from day one.
I had false labor a few times and then a few times they had to stop labor because it was too early. After sometime I didn’t go back into labor so I was induced. My labor was short 4 to 5 hours but Austin had the cord around his neck and was a little bluish to begin with. He finally came around and was a normal, tiny baby. I guess that is wrong because out of all my kids he was the biggest. He also squeaked instead of crying. He was so quit I was afraid to sleep. He had a hard time with the formula in the hospital so he had to be on something special for reflux. The pallet on the top of his mouth was high so he needed special nipples or he couldn’t latch on. He failed his hearing test in the hospital so the requested I bring him back in a week. We were discharge from the hospital 24 hours after his birth.
At the age of three weeks he had his first surgery, he needed tubes in his ears because they wouldn’t drain right. When they had him under the shocked his vocal cords and one was paralyzed. This explained the squeaky cry. Throughout the next three years he had to have the tubes replaced three times and that vocal cord never moved. He began special education at age three mainly just speech. He never had any problems with his motor skills, or development. He was a very smart kid. He had a bit of a temper when he found it hard to communicate what he wanted. When Austin was 20 months old I gave birth to our fourth child, another very unplanned baby boy. We didn’t plan to have anymore because we thought it would be unfair to the baby that we had to give Austin so much attention. It worked out just fine.
At almost three years old, we took him in for allergy tests because he had a reaction to shrimp. Schell fish has a relationship to iodine which they use in a lot of medical procedures. The allergist had a hard time getting a blood pressure. It kept coming back high in the arms and barely there in the legs. They advised we talk to his doctor. After our doctor took his blood pressure in every way possible he sent us to a cardiologist. In running test they found a narrowing in his aorta. The specialist said it’s amazing he was even walking. The veins going to his legs had adapted and grew three times the normal size to compensate for the narrowing. They wanted to do surgery. It was March 2006 Austin’s third birthday. Everybody came. People that didn’t normally come to kid’s birthdays. The people you only see once a year at the holidays. They all came because the following month Austin was to have Heart Surgery. I couldn’t help it I cried when he blew out the candles. I kept thinking what if this was his last birthday.
That day finally came and I didn’t want to let go of him. I couldn’t sleep without him in my arms. I had the most sickening feelings when I was away from him. My mother wanted to be at the hospital but knew she’d be helping me the most be staying back to babysit my other kids. Dave’s’ mother, her twin sister, grandmother and father with his stepmother did however come to the hospital. They took him back to put him to sleep and I was strong and didn’t cry till they had him asleep. We waited in the waiting room for about half an hour and they asked us all to meet them in the hall way to say one last goodbye. They had him prepped for surgery. They were breathing for him and had him packed in ice. He was blue and looked dead. I lost it and almost fell to the ground and what made it worse was Dave’s father broke down too! Larry the man that Dave and I have only ever seen cry once and that was at his own dad’s funeral. They went over what they were going to and told us there was a chance that they may have to do open heart surgery but they would avoid that if they could. I kept thinking he didn’t even know what was going on. I tried explaining it to him but he was so use to getting his ears done that he just thought he’d wake up in my arms get a Popsicle and go home. He didn’t understand they had to stop his heart, drain blood into a machine and remove part of his aorta. At this time he was only alive through the machines pumping blood and breathing for him. The surgery took only hours but it seemed like an eternity.
Everything went well and they avoided open heart altogether. They let us know that he may have problems in the future but it should only need a stint not a whole other surgery. He was discharged from the hospital just seven days after major heart surgery. On the way home he asked if he could play on the trampoline, which was heart breaking because he had to take it easy. At follow up appointments at his regular doctor’s office the nurse gave him the nickname shark bite because his scare looks very much like one. We followed up closely and he never had to go back on blood pressure medication. He even became very active. He continued on to do two years in a head start program with speech therapy. They believed he could do no wrong. Austin my little angel, who’s halo is held up by his horns.
Austin began kindergarten with ease. He already had friends from head start but tested right into kindergarten passing young fives. He was discharge from speech and could communicate with no problems. Well he did sometimes get ahead of himself and stutter but only when his mind was going faster than his mouth. He began to be troublesome for the teacher. He couldn’t sit still and was constantly getting up. We spoke to the doctor and they said it may be ADD. As the year progressed so did his behavior, progressively got worse. He was defiant at home and falling behind at school because he didn’t pay attention. Somehow he past into first grade. Now we are to the present, his first grade year.
He was behind in reading to begin with and never paid enough attention to catch up. He is very smart and tests great. He doesn’t sit still long enough to listen to what is is suppose to do. Early in the year I get a call at work that Austin is in the office for throwing a boy on the ground. Fighting in first grade great I thought. My girls never got in to trouble like this. Later that month he got a pink slip from the bus driver for hitting his sister and not staying seated on the bus. He was rightly punished at home and given an assigned seat on the bus right behind the driver. After weeks going by with no incidents we believed we were behind it. At parent teacher conferences we were corrected. The teacher told us of Austin’s many stunts and misbehavior. We took him back to the doctor, asking if he needed to “talk” to somebody. The doctor increased his medication and we all noticed an immediate difference. His grades were brought up and no more notes home. One day