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Sean Patrick Forney
January 22, 1997
This is Sean, when he was 3 hour old. He is attached to an oscillating ventilator, his umbilical cord has been attached to tubing for drawing labs and checking his health status, and both his hand and his toe are attached to equiptment that measures Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide levels. Mom is touching his foot in what would be the first and only touch permitted for the first 10 days of his life. His ear is covered so he can't hear the noises around him.
Now that you have been introduced to Sean the first time I got to see him outside of an ultrasound picture, let me start at the beginning. In order to do that, let me take you back to the time shortly before we were blessed to find out we were pregnant.
We were planning a family move to a new state, so that we could raise our family in a rural community. We took a vacation so that we could look around and see where in that area would most suite our desires, and indeed we found a perfectly lovely area that we immediately fell in love with. In the course of a few months we found out we were pregnant, found a house to purchase, and sold our old house. All of these things were clearly gifts from the Lord, as they all fit together in ways we could not have predicted.
The move to our new home happened when 20 weeks of pregnancy had passed quite uneventfully: no morning sickness, no cramping, nothing to indicate that there was a problem. As we settled in to our new surroundings and began to enjoy the crisp cold of our first real winter, we found out that our child had a problem called Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia (CDH). The reason it was discovered was there was too much amniotic fluid in the sac, and on ultrasound to discover why the CDH was discovered. We transferred the pregnancy care to perinatologists and over the next 5 weeks had a large amount of amniotic fluid removed, totalling over a gallon of excess fluid. Had this fluid not been removed, he likely would have been stillborn.
Sean was born via an emergency ceserean on January 22, 1997. We had planned a natural birth, as it would help remove the excess fluid from his lungs and help him to breathe better, but when his heart rate started to dip with contractions it appeared he needed to get out quickly. He did cry one weak little cry when he was born, much to everyones great surprise. He was whisked away to the NICU unit at our hospital, and immediately placed on a ventilator that kept his lungs fillled at all times. Following x-rays, it was determined that Sean indeed have CDH, with the hole on the left side of his body. We knew that the next few hours and days would be most critical, as the surgeon would not perform the CDH repair until Sean was stablized.
Thankfully Sean did extrememly well, and on his 1 week birthday the repair was perfomed. It was found at that time that Seans liver, stomach, intestines, and spleen were all in his chest, with the spleen in the precarious position of being wrapped around his spine behind his heart. The surgeon told us after the surgery that Sean had about 80% of his right lung, and the left lung looked a bit like a piece of chewing gum flapping in time with the ventilator. We knew that the next few days and weeks would likely be touch and go, as many CDH babies are not able to survive more than a few days post surgery. We were told that Sean would likely be on the ventilator for a minimum of 2 months, with at least 6 months in the hospital (assuming he lived of course).
