Dan Abel wrote:


> We don't know. It wasn't listed as SIDS, but no one could explain why
> not. He just died. He was two weeks short of his first birthday. My
> wife was driving on the freeway. He was in the carseat in the back. My
> wife peeked back there using the mirror and his eyes were rolled up in
> his head. She stopped and flagged some people down. A truck driver
> called it in, and a nurse administered CPR. He was taken to the
> hospital, and put on life support. The doctor told my wife that there
> was no remaining brain activity, and that he would never come back to
> life. My wife consented to discontinuing the life support. The autopsy
> showed nothing.
>
> We had a two year old, who was home with me. That helped us focus, as
> he needed our care, and we couldn't just mope around and feel sorry for
> ourselves. We went on to have two more children.
>


Oh god, Dan. How awful for you both. I'm so sorry.

When my son was 10 days old he did a crash and burn with a sky-high
fever. I had him in bed with me so I noticed it almost immediately and
rushed him to the pediatrician.

When the doc examined him he wanted me to wait there while he called an
ambulance to take him to the hospital. I told him, screw that, call
ahead to the ER and tell them we're on our way, I can get him there
faster myself. And I did.

By the time the rest of the family started arriving they still didn't
have any idea what was wrong with him, and I had to listen to him scream
as they tried to start an IV.

My mother was there by then and I said that I was afraid he might die.
She was quiet a few seconds and then said that there were some things
worse than dead. It was like a bucket of ice water to the face. I'd
been thinking binary - dead or not dead, never giving a thought to the
in between. I thought I was going to faint. Then I wanted to slap her.

It was touch and go for about four days. He was having bouts of apnea.
I stayed with him round the clock and jostled him and called his name
every time his O2 sat would start to drop. He was hooked to telemetry
but I'd seen how long it too the nursing staff to get to his bed when an
alarm sounded.

And then he recovered, completely, as far as anybody can tell. They
wound up calling it "pneumonia", despite the lack of any symptoms or
diagnostic evidence. This was 14 years ago. I still feel angry about
the lack of answers about what happened to him and why.