Our daughter was in the Alberta Children’s Hospital last weekend and I finally got around to thanking some people for how they helped us through Kye’s loss.
After Paula’s surgery, his remains were taken to the Children’s Hospital for autopsy. Unfortunately, they were not able to tell us what happened (Dr Woods, the surgeon was nice enough to put his remains in fermaldihyde, which made some tests impossible). They did however get us a few things that really helped. All of which, Dr Woods had said were not possible…
They were able to tell us Kye was a boy. That really, really helped the process for us to be able to identify him as a boy and not an “it” and give him a boy’s name. A number of people (read as idiots) had said not to worry about it and just give him a generic name or pick a gender, and we would have if we had had to, but it really does not work as well as getting an answer. When Paula went into surgery I begged the doctor to find me an answer and tried to explain just how important I knew it was to Paula and I. He made it quite clear that it would be hard and he really didn’t care. Luckily, the Children’s Hospital was able to give us an answer and it helped a lot.
After I finally tracked Kye down (Dr Woods of course first told me that we could not get the remains and then gave me the wrong phone number), I arranged for his cremation. Luckily, at that point I ran into a bit more red tape and was forced to talk to a social worker about an autopsy. It turns out that we were supposed to get hooked up with a social worker while we were at Foothills hospital for Paula’s operation, but they had screwed it up… Go figure, they did that a lot. Well, that got me talking to Lori-Ann Schultz who has been a tremendous help through all of this. I happened to mention that we had asked for Kye’s foot prints, hand prints, or something to remember him by since we never got to see him. She called me back in five minutes to say that while they had not been able to get a hand print, they had a set of foot prints for us. When we finally got the foot prints, they were even on a nice card with an appropriate little poem and were beautifully done. That card and footprints are the closest thing to a picture or something similar that we have of Kye. You can not imagine how important that is to us.
Anyways, I just thought that the staff who handled his remains and autopsy should know just how much it ment to us since I am sure it must really suck to continually just see the worst side of that.
I bought them a nice card and wrote a note telling them how much I appreciated what they did for us. I had wanted to actually say thanks, but by this time, I realized that there was no way that I could do much more than croak “thanks” and start balling, so I settled for a letter. I had the charge nurse in Emma’s ward track them down and it turned out that they were just down the hall, which then meant that every time I walked down the hall I thought of Kye… Anyways, I hope they got and appreciated the letter. It was addressed simply to “the people who handle infant autopsies”, but when I dropped it off, the nurse started reading it aloud, then stopped and looked really sadly at me and said that she would make sure that it got to the correct people.
That was one of the toughest things that I have done since the surgery.
When I got back from my “walk” of course Paula realized that I was messed up and made me tell her what was up (I had not talked to her before hand because we were both pretty stressed and I figured that it would be better to explain later). She was just thankful to them too.
So, once again, to the “people who handle infant autopsies” ad the Alberta Children’s Hospital, thanks a lot.
Just a few comments for anyone that does this kind of work:
1) Thanks, it is very important to someone.
2) Sometimes the answer is more important than the truth. I begged with several staff to just give me an answer about Kye’s gender and was clear that I just needed an answer for her. If they could not get a scientific answer, a gut feeling would do so I could tell my wife without me having to lie to her. Most were genuinely unsympathetic. I don’t think that they realized that we really needed an answer to be able to move on. The truth of the answer is secondary. While I don’t think that the Pathology dept made up an answer, if they did, I am even more thankful to them. Frankly, this also applies to his footprints. They give us something to hold onto.
In short, if you are ever stuck with working a case like this, please remember, while things like footprints and gender are medically not important, they can be very important for a parent’s healing and any way that you can give them that comfort is a great help.
Continue reading Thanks to the Pathology Dept at Alberta Children’s Hospital