One Call Can Change Your Life
The best phone call I ever received was around two years ago. It was about 8:30 at night, and
my family was gathered in my parent’s bedroom waiting for my older sister Madison to pick up on the other end of Facetime. She’d been living in Hawaii at the time, and during our weekly calls she would usually update us on some of the most exciting things that had happened in the last few days. So when she answered with her fiancé Chadry right next to her and informed us that she had something crazy to tell us, I figured it was that they’d finally moved into the new house she’d been looking at or had just gotten back from an amazing hike that she wanted to tell us all about. I don’t think anyone was prepared for the real news.
A few minutes into our talk, Madison randomly held up this little seashell that she’d found on
the beach and said how pretty she thought it was. My dad agreed, and then commented that it was probably the smallest shell he’d ever seen. She got a strange smile on her face suddenly, and then as casually as if she were commenting on the weather, she replied, “I think it’s about the size of the baby in my stomach right now.” It took everyone a good seven seconds to process that statement and another two minutes for us all to calm down enough to let Madison answer the million questions we had. The next few weeks were filled with anticipation as I began the countdown towards the day that I would officially become an aunt. Everyone spent hours poring over baby books and websites for the perfect name; we placed imaginary bets on what the gender would be and who the baby would look most like. Every ultrasound photo that was sent to us went straight onto our fridge. Then five months into her pregnancy, we got another phone call. This one wasn’t quite so cheerful.
I don’t know what scared me more at the time, hearing that my sister’s first child was going to
be born with Gastroschisis, or the fact that I had absolutely no idea what that was, just that it was really, really bad. I later learned that Gastroschisis was a birth defect of the belly, where the muscles that make up the baby’s abdominal wall don’t form correctly, so a hole occurs that allows intestines and other organs to extend outside of the body. This meant that as soon as this child was born, he would have to be taken away immediately to be placed into surgery so that the organs could be put back into his body. Madison would not even be able to hold him until long after the operation was finished. The doctor informed us that he might have problems with feeding, digesting food, and absorbing nutrients for the rest of his life. He also let us know that this defect was occasionally fatal. The baby would need to be born in a level three NIC unit, which is a neonatal intensive care unit due to the severity of his condition.
There was no such facility on Kauai, so it was decided that Madison would have her baby in Arizona. She flew out days after learning of his condition.
On February 4th, 2014, Arrow Kewiwainuimaikalalau Kaheowa’anuiponili’ihoapa’ipa’inohohuPa
was born. He ended up going through not one or two, but nine surgeries, six of those taking place before he was even a month old. We were told it could be a long time before Arrow was fit to be out of the hospital’s care. Where other teens might be driving over to their sister’s house to look at their nephew through the bars of a crib, I was driving to the hospital to stare at my new nephew through a glass box in the NIC unit. For months I was even too afraid to hold him in fear that I’d accidently pull out one of the many tubes the nurses had stuck in his body. Three month olds usually cry because they’re hungry or tired or feeling like testing out their lungs. Arrow cried because his medicine was making him sick, or the tubes were giving him rashes, or maybe just because he was constantly surrounded by large strangers
with cold hands and big needles. As weeks passed, he began to show signs of significant improvement. He was finally released from the hospital when he was four months old. I still regard watching Madison and Chad run (well okay more like speed walk because they had Arrow in their arms) out of the hospital crying and laughing with pure delight because the doctors had just given them the okay to take their baby home as one of the best moments of my life.
It was one of the hardest things to see him go through so many trials at such a young age, and I wish I wasn’t able to say that I know my way around the NIC unit of the Desert Samaritan Hospital almost as well as my own room, but his journey gave me some perspective. Going through this made me realize how truly blessed I am just to be able to say that I’m healthy, and how great it is to know that I have such a strong family, one who knows how to shed a hopeful light on even the most stressful situations. Arrow is now almost two. He is walking, talking, and eating just as well as any other kid his age, and he is in perfect health. He’s the toughest person I know and I adore him more than anything. Nothing makes me happier than knowing that I’ll be able to watch him continue to grow and mature.
