FULL CODE

No wonder it was a mess in the special care clinic today. They called “Full Code” as Jacob’s color worsened and his blood pressure fell. It’s the code that tells the teams that a patient is between life and death. I now understand why we had teams from surgery, cardiology, ER & PICU and god knows what other departments rushing into Jacob’s room.
I now remember this lady completely dressed in black who they pushed in the room asking me if I have ever experienced this with my child before. I said “yes” with a question mark, since I was not so sure what I was truly answering. Jacob has numerous times needed to go to the PICU, but there is only one time where I wasn’t sure he was going to survive. With all the crew, I thought we were nearing another intubation, which was not the case I found out later. She finally left me after I had said yes to a glass of water.
Jacob should not have had a FULL CODE today, only a “Rapid Response Team” call. This means still immediate medical help, but not the whole shebang as we got today! At least now I know how that looks, if we ever need it.
We’re now up on the 8th floor at Children’s. We had our shortest PICU stay so far – a total of 10 hours before we got transferred up. Jacob is doing much better tonight. He still has a pretty rough cough with secretions, but no fever or blood pressure issues. He’s treated as he has H1N1, but reality is that he most likely doesn’t. He’s just not sick enough.
As I am waiting for doctor #2 to come into our room to ask me the same questions again (I have gotten so good at this!), and again wake Jacob up for an exam, I am looking out at the winter landscape from the 8th floor of TCH. The snowflakes are still coming down, slowly taking their time to reach the ground. Untouched snow is simply beautiful. I have hope tonight that we get to spend Halloween at home.
Knowing that our code was wrong today gives me a little boast of hope as well.
Sleep tight, Maria.