In case you're wondering that's Job as in the Bible, not job as in employment. When my neutropenic (no immune system from chemo) daughter spiked a fever, at the same time that the doctors told me my wife wasn't going to make it through the night, while my preemie son was in the NICU, I'll admit that I was pretty PO'd at God. I might not have screamed out (or written) "God, why have you forsaken me?", but I was thinking it!

I also call it my "Sophie's Choice" moment. My wife Andrea was in the Tacoma General ICU with a staph infection that was killing her, my son Nick was in the Tacoma General NICU and Alex was home with me recovering from chemo. I was on my way out the door to go back to the hospital to see Andrea and Nick. I stopped to give Alex a kiss before I left and discovered she had a fever (102F). When your child is neutropenic and has a fever, you have one hour to get them to the hospital or risk them going septic. So I got ready to take Alex to her hospital (Childrens Seattle), which was 50 minutes away, and the phone rang. It was Andrea's primary doctor calling to tell me that Andrea had taken a turn for the worse and would have to go back into surgery. He told me I needed to get back to Tacoma General immediately. My Mother-in-law was there at the time, so I had to make a choice. Send Alex to the hospital in Seattle with her and get to Andrea's hospital or vice versa. Now my MIL had only driven to Alex's hospital a few times and doesn't have the best sense of direction, so I made the only decision I thought I could, I took Alex to Seattle and my MIL went to Tacoma. In the end it turned out to be a really good decision.

For some reason Andrea had always thought she was allergic to Ampicillin. It was in her medical records and when the doctors asked her, she confirmed that she was allergic. When Andrea's Mom got to the hospital that night, she was told that Andrea wasn't going to make it through the night. As Andrea lay dying in the ICU, the doctors asked her one more time if she was allergic to Ampicillin and she said yes. Right then her Mom spoke up and said that she wasn't allergic to Ampicillin, she was only allergic to Penicillin. They immediately started Andrea on Ampicillin and within 24 hours she started to show improvement. It probably wasn't the Ampicillin alone that saved her, but my theory is that it triggered some sort of response from her immune system that allowed her body to start fighting the infection.

At the same time that this was going on I was in the Emergency Room at Childrens Seattle waiting for Alex to be admitted. While I was sitting there an intern and nurse came in to start Alex on antibiotics. It was an intern I didn't know, so just to be safe I asked him what antibiotic they were putting her on and if you can believe it, it turned out to be one that she was allergic to. For some reason that info had been left off the ER chart.

So basically if I had made the opposite decision and sent my Mother-in-law to the hospital with Alex and gone to be with Andrea, there's a good chance I would be a widower today, not to mention what would have happened to Alex as a result of the allergic reaction to the antibiotic. I'm not a particularly religious person, and maybe it was just blind luck, but for whatever reason I made the right choice. Three days later Alex got out of the hospital as her fevers disappeared overnight. One week later Andrea was released from the hospital. Five weeks later Nick was released from the hospital, four weeks before his original due date. And then a week after that we all boarded a plane to North Carolina so Alex could have her second Cord Blood Transplant at Duke. I won't bore you with the details of that, just suffice it to say transplants suck, but they do work.

It's now almost 4 years later and I have a healthy, nearly 4 year old son, a relatively health (almost) 9 year old daughter and a wife who's alive, but remembers very little about what happened to her. As hard as it was, it was all worth it. I've known too many parents who lost their kids, so I honestly feel guilty if I complain about what we went through. And let's just say that I no longer consider myself a latter day Job. I do keep telling my wife though that I'm owed one long hospital stay of my own, preferably in a padded room!

-- T

P.S. The photo at the top was taken by one of Nick's nurses while I was doing kangaroo care. During kangaroo care the preemie is typically placed on the Mom's chest, but because of Andrea's health problems, the job fell to me. To this day I'm worried that Nick will have an unhealthy attraction to hairy chested women!