August 2009

August 20, 2009

It's been a very exciting few days!

Charlotte's condition is totally stable and she's healing beautifully. After the plasma transfusion the other day her blood pressure and volume is normal and the feeling and usage is returning (albeit really slowly) to her left arm. She is still getting nutrition and fluids intravenously, but meanwhile her stomach seems to be healing pretty well. Again, we don't know if it will really function anymore but the fact that it's knitting back together is a very good sign.

After careful hugs and gallons of tears, she demanded - or rather, garbled through her wired jaw - to see her baby. It broke my heart to not be able to bring the baby to Charlotte. The good news is, Baby Girl has a name, Maisie, and also that she is responding well to the metronidazole. The bad news is she hasn't gained any weight at all. She's exactly the same as (actually, a quarter of an ounce lower than) she was at birth. We have no idea why she's not gaining any weight. It's really quite scary.

The most frustrating thing about all of this is how uncertain their futures are. Charlotte's stomach might not function anymore. Maisie might never have a cohesive digestive system, or functioning lungs, or working kidneys, or the ability to speak or breath or eat or walk. She might do all of those things and more. We just don't know. It's maddening.

August 17-18, 2009

Charlotte is doing well. She's casted, wired, and bruised purple pretty much from head to toe in Hospital #1, and no longer in ICU.

And now enter Hospital #2: when Charlotte was first admitted to the ER, one of the first things they did was take blood and tissue samples to raise awareness of any infectious diseases she may have contracted from whatever she was stabbed with or any bacteria/viruses that might have gotten into her wounds. The results were returned yesterday afternoon with a positive for Clostridium tetani –tetanus– but not in Charlotte. Charlotte has recently been vaccinated. But the baby hasn't.

Because neonatal tetanus is so rare in developed countries, Hospital #1 didn't have a good system for Baby Girl's treatment. Thus, she had to be emergency air-lifted to Hospital #2, where she could be taken care of. Unfortunately, the second hospital is almost as far away from the first as possible. Ideally Charlotte would have been transferred with her baby, but because she is so weak it doesn't make sense to try to move her or to take her away from her doctors. She's getting a ten-day treatment of metronidazole through the PICC line and being monitored constantly for any negative symptoms.

Miranda, who was in Disney World with some friends for her birthday, came home early today to see Charlotte. Obviously Charlotte can't speak (or maybe even hear) but Miranda talked - and cried - enough for the two of them. She is so upset, and even suggested transferring to NYU to be nearby, but I shot that down. 

Finally, a plasma transfusion for Charlotte is scheduled for tomorrow morning and will proceed unless she makes enough blood on her own overnight. Her attacker managed to damage the biggest nerve possible in her left arm, but the tests are showing it repairing itself well. She may lose some feeling in her fingers, but maybe not. Brain damage is becoming less and less of a concern so hopefully Charlotte will be woken up soon and Miranda will get to talk to her sister before she has to leave for school.

August 16, 2009

I met with her assortment of doctors and have been provided with a rundown of her injuries, which I transcribed below.

- broken jaw (mandible & maxilla)
- broken nose
- shattered zygomatic arch
- ruptured spleen, stomach
- bruised liver, kidney, colon, small intestine
- hemorrhaging in abdomen
- six broken ribs (four clean breaks, one shatter, one hairline)
- broken left arm (elbow & upper)
- severe bruising across left side of body
- broken hip on right side

- severe blood loss from stab wounds to arms and abdomen

- lacerations across face, arms, and stomach

Charlotte is slowly stabilizing. Upon arrival in the ER she was put into a medically induced coma to prevent shock. The baby was removed via emergency c-section and directly afterwards they sewed Charlotte's stomach back together and removed her spleen entirely. We don't know if it will ever function as a stomach again. We're lucky she's alive, and for now she's on Prevacid to prevent all production of stomach acid while the stitches heal. In total, Charlotte received over five hundred stitches and surgical staples. 

At this point she has a neck brace and a body brace to stabilize her ribs while they operate and treat the rest of her. Over the next few days her jaw will be wired shut while her face heals. Likewise, her nose and arm will both be casted. Her ribs have already been set and should heal fine on their own. Her hip is not as badly broken as it could be and may not require any treatment except stillness.

We want Charlotte to name the baby, so we are waiting for her to be awake and lucid enough to do so. Babygirl is in Neonatal Intensive Care, weighs one pound, eleven ounces, and is clinging desperately to life. She's on a ventilator so that she doesn't have to waste energy and calories breathing, and is currently receiving nutrition through an NG tube. When she gets bigger they'll put in an g tube and hopefully she'll begin to take breastmilk. She has a PICC line to administer antibiotics and anti-inflammatories. Thankfully, the nature of a pregnant belly protected the baby from severe damage. At this moment she faces little more than any other preemie does. Which is still a lot. As the doctor explained, we will likely encounter more and more complications as the baby grows and changes.

Our biggest concern for both girls is head trauma. Charlotte has already had a CAT scan that seemed relatively normal. The baby may not have fared so well. Charlotte shows signs of having been throttled and during that time and possibly some time afterwards, the baby was deprived of oxygen. How this has affected her, we don't know. She probably also received some kind of head trauma from beating around the womb during the attack. At this moment, it is impossible to know how she will be affected.

Right now, I'm just glad my babies are alive.

August 15, 2009

Four years ago tonight, my twenty-one-year-old daughter Charlotte was discovered outside her Manhattan apartment, beaten to a pulp and thrown into a trash can to die. She was almost seven months pregnant. That night I began keeping a diary. Yesterday Charlotte suggested I post my diary in a blog so that she can contribute and we can share our story with the world. I now begin the first entry:

Yesterday my daughter was happy, healthy, twenty-nine weeks pregnant. I had the promise of fall and a new baby. Today I have a tiny, premature granddaughter and a catatonic Charlotte.  I am sitting here in a dark hospital room staring at my hands and wondering who we will have buried when all this is over.

Ten days after she turned twenty, Charlotte announced to her father, Gregory, and me that she wanted to marry her boyfriend of two years, Ricky. We were not pleased, to say the least.  Gregory had hated Ricky from the first, for no reason other than what our younger daughter Miranda called "bad vibes", but they were in love. We reluctantly gave our blessing. It was a small wedding, seventeen people in a church, a picnic in our backyard afterwards. Charlotte and Ricky moved into his apartment in New York and several months later they announced they were pregnant. I have to admit, both Gregory and I were ecstatic. We had warmed up to Ricky considerably, especially after he got a good job in the pediatrician's office where Charlotte was training to become a doctor. We were actually considering the possibility that we were wrong about him.

Neither of my pregnancies were particularly difficult, but I experienced extreme anxiety during the second month. Charlotte, identical to me in so many ways, was warned of this strange and stressful period and it hit her sure as shooting at six weeks. At the same time, Ricky had to go away to Colorado because his grandmother was very sick. Charlotte did not want to be alone, so she moved in with us in New Jersey temporarily, taking a medical leave from school for three weeks. I helped her through the vomiting, headaches, and panic attacks that I suffered too, and at nine weeks she was almost ready to go home. I had just run out to get some things for dinner when I realized I had left behind the coupons I'd meant to bring. I turned the car around and popped back inside, and heard shouting. At first I was terrified, thinking there was an intruder. Then I realized it was Charlotte on the phone, speaking to Ricky. Arguing with Ricky. Saying awful things. As soon as she hung up, I approached her. She broke down, explaining through sobs what was going on.

Ricky had come home drunk one night two weeks ago and she had berated him for it. The fight escalated and soon they were screaming. Suddenly, Ricky picked up a plate and threw it at Charlotte. She has a scar three inches long on her chest. He was so mad he missed her face that he slapped her several times. A neighbor heard the commotion and called the police and Ricky fled. Charlotte was taken to the hospital and treated, but she refused to tell them who had hurt her. She later told me that she wanted to sort things out with Ricky herself, but when she tried he got angry and accused her of being histrionic. That was the night she called me from a restaurant bathroom and asked to move in. The whole time we thought he was in Colorado, Ricky was really in their apartment half an hour away.

I drove Charlotte to the police station, where she gave witness. That night, Ricky was arrested and several weeks later he went to jail for eight months. She moved into a new apartment and began buying baby clothes and blankets and toys. It was a new chapter in her life, a new beginning with a new baby. The last time I saw her was just over a week ago. I had gone to New York to bring her the crib and high chair she used as a baby.

Reportedly, Ricky was let out early on good behavior two days before Charlotte was attacked. No one has seen him since.

Yesterday, I was weeding my garden and tending the pumpkins, dreaming of my first Halloween with my tiny, new grandbaby. This morning, I'm waiting to see if I'll have a daughter in the next few hours. I have no words. Everything is gone.