Jessie Jaymes

I had taken my 4 month old baby girl, Jessie, to her pediatrician for the 3rd time in a month. She was'nt sleeping or eating well and she had a cough. This time the doctor knew she was sick as soon as he saw her. Because I was with her everyday, I had'nt noticed she was blue around her mouth and her fingers and toes were cold. They sent her on a stretcher with an oxygen mask through the parking lot to the local hospital. They told me it looked like severe pneumonia. She was life flighted to the old Vanderbilt Children's Hospital. I was'nt worried. I had seen wires and monitors and needles when she was born with the cord around her neck and had to be revived after 5 minutes of no signs. She had turned out just fine then or so I thought. At Vanderbilt they put her on a ventilator and gave her drugs to paralyze her and put her to sleep. I was still taking pictures for her scrapbook and rotating her newly pierced earrings. A few days into her stay, after she showed no progress, they ran test. They discovered she had Pulmonary Vein Stenosis. The veins running from her lungs to her heart were too narrow. The blood was backing up into her lungs mimicking pneumonia. They told me there was no cure. They told me in professional terms that she would not survive. I remembered running out into the hall and when I got to the end I did'nt know where I was going. My mom caught up with me and I fell to the floor crying. They gave Jessie diaretics to dry her lungs out and she was being fed by a tube through her nose. She had minor blood transfusions because they had to draw her blood so often. It was a nightmare that I was'nt going to wake from. They performed angioplasty (ballooning of the veins) but warned us it would'nt save her, only buy more time. 20 days after she was admitted they allowed her to wake up and they let us hold her for the 1st time. Itwas christmas eve. They told us we had 2 options. We could take her home to die on her own time or we could prep her to be transported to St Louise for a lung transplant. The newest type of organ transplant in children. Even then, she probably would'nt survive. After thinking about my options, I decided to try for the transplant, hoping that a country that was able to put a man on the moon years ago could come up with a way to save my daughter if it bought us some time. She did better than I could have imagined with the treatment at Vanderbilt. The nurses all wanted her on their patient list for the day. She came off the ventilator down toa nasal canula. She came off all the medicine except for orajel for the 4 teeth she had gotten while she was asleep for 3 weeks. I started to beleive in maricles. I stayed the night with her when she got her own room which I had only done once before because in the old hospital you could'nt sleep ine the PICU with your child. The next day she crashed. In a matter of hours she went from laughing and eating to square one. But this time she would'nt stabalize. When I entered the room, a team of doctors and nurses was performing CPR. The doctor asked my permission to stop. I looked around stunned. Looking back and forth at the monitors I had learned to read. The doctor asked again. I remembered asking if Jessie would come back and she said "no". I said ok you can stop. They unhooked all the machines and lines from her. They put her new pajamas on and handed her to me. I sat holding her in a rocking chair as she faded. I knew God had allowed me to be with her, holding her, before she was gone. They pronounced her time of death never disturbing me. They told me I was allowed to stay as long as I wanted. The nurses took her handprints and footprints for a scrapbook that they give to parents whose children pass away. I remembered telling one nurse to find my parents and tell them that I said they could stop CPR. I decided Vanderbilt Children's Hospital staff is good at what they do because they do it with their hearts. Our too favorite nurses came to the funeral almost an hour from the hospital. That's when you know, that's when you realize what they put into each shift and what they take home with them when their shift is over.

The Family of Jessie Jaymes Haggard