Reality

5/8/98
Zach had picked up the occasional cold and ear infection from being in day care but nothing too serious. We had some allergy testing which didn't amount to much although our cat ended up with a new home. I was at Capone’s in Couer d’ Alene (they sponsor our softball team) celebrating a tournament victory when I got a call at the bar from my sister Julie. Gina had taken Zach down to Deaconess hospital. Zach had a bacterial pneumonia which makes it harder for the heart to pump blood through the lungs. It was the first real test of how strong Zach’s heart was and unfortunately the answer was "not very". This had been our WAKE UP call. Zach's medical problems weren't just going to go away. I remember Zach and I playing catch in his hospital room. It’s a game we had played a hundred times at home. I hand him the ball and he throws it to me. Zach was weak and getting weaker. By the end of the day he couldn’t respond to us. By the end of the next day Zach was on the respirator and doing worse. He continued to get worse and worse as his heart struggled to compensate for the resistance in the lungs from the pneumonia.

Dr. Garabedian was gone to Armenia to do cardiology there are needy children. I know there's lots of kids that need Dr. Garabedian but it's hard to share. Dr. Allen was very good to us during this time. He treated Zach just as wonderfully as he does all of his regular patients. He is very open and honest with us but we preferred Dr. Garabedian's optisimism (some would say denial). Dr. Allen feels that Zach will need further surgery at some point and that this is something that he won't grow out of. When Dr. Garabedian got back his approach was lets wait and see.

Finally, several days later, Zach improved enough to get off the respirator and have another heart cath done which always takes a lot out of him. The doctors did discover some valuable information about the actual structure of Zach’s heart anomalies but somehow Zach contracted a viral pneumonia and we ended up back on the respirator. No matter how much you hear it you never get used to the mechanical wooshing sound of a machine breathing for a family member.

After several weeks Zach finally had recovered enough to be off the respirator but we had a long road ahead of us. Before Zach went into the hospital he had just taken his first steps, now he couldn't even hold his head up on his own. After some tearful (for Zach) visits from the physical therapist and much more time spent on our own, Zach finally regained the ability to sit for short stretches and to crawl some. Eventually on Gina’s birthday we got to bring Zach home. By the time a month had passed Zach seemed to be doing much better and we looked forward to showing Dr. Garabedian our progress at our next office visit.

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