Today is Laila's Alive Day

Today marks my daughter Laila’s alive day - the day her heart was miraculously fixed by a team of surgeons, doctors, and nurses. It also marks the most terrifying experience of my life.?

I still remember the moment I found out. I was working from home because the world was shut down in the early stages of COVID-19.?Indra went to the obstetrician alone because I was not allowed to join her.?

We were full of hopeful anticipation following nearly two months of bed rest, forced on Indra because earlier in the pregnancy her placenta began to tear, causing her to hemorrhage and almost lose our child.?

But in this moment I was eagerly awaiting an update, hopefully that the tear was fixed and Indra could cease bed rest. I received a text message - “Are you free to speak with me and Dr. Naylor?”?Of course I was.

Indra put me on speakerphone. The doctor started with the news I was expecting to hear - the placental issue was fixed and no longer a concern.?And then he paused - the kind of pause where you can actually hear the other person thinking.?

“But there’s another issue, and it’s serious.” Dr. Naylor then went on to say that during his examination he detected an abnormality in our daughter’s heart. He stated that he suspected she had something called TGA, or transposition of the great arteries. Dr. Naylor explained it bluntly but empathetically.?The arteries of our baby’s heart were each going into the wrong chamber, which meant that her heart would only circulate oxygenated blood to and from the lungs, and bad blood to and from the body. In other words our child could not survive outside the womb without major open heart surgery.

I felt a numbness creep up within me that I’ve only felt a few times in my life.?The first time was when I held a dead Marine in my arms on the battlefield.?Another was when I landed on a runway and fired up my phone to see a text message that my father had passed away unexpectedly.?In other words, I’ve only felt the total absence of any sensation when someone I love left this earth.?

Not being in the room with Indra at that moment felt like my biggest failure as a husband, however Indra’s voice, speaking through the phone, never so much as quivered.?She didn’t cry. She didn’t feel sorry for herself.?She simply leapt into solution mode.?

Over the coming months we realized just how lucky we were.?I know how crazy that sounds, to consider yourself lucky in those circumstances.?But, living in Los Angeles, we had two of the world’s premiere children’s hospitals within twenty miles of our front door.?Each had world-renowned pediatric cardiothoracic surgeons.?My job at Team Rubicon provided me with incredible health insurance that meant I didn’t have to worry about mortgaging my home to save my child’s life.?I was surrounded by an executive team and board who had my back, who allowed me the time and space necessary to plan for our child’s arrival, and who would not send me a single work related message for seven straight weeks after she was born.?I had a courageous mother at serious risk from COVID, who traveled 2,000 miles to come and help take care of our toddler Valija while we were in the hospital. So yes, we felt lucky.

We spent the week prior to the due date living in a hotel near Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA). We couldn’t risk not being within a stone’s throw of the hospital because if Indra unexpectedly went into labor and didn’t make it in time we would have to call a helicopter to airlift the baby to a NICU capable of keeping her alive.

When the day finally came, Indra had to deliver at a hospital down the street from CHLA since, ais a children’s hospital, they don’t have a maternity ward.?Indra was induced according to plan, while a team of specialists - cardiologists, neonatologists, pulmonologists, and critical care nurses - prepared to receive our daughter at CHLA.

Precious little Laila Faith Wood entered the world just after 11:20 a.m. on November 20th, 2020.?Nurses immediately grabbed her and whisked her away, injecting her with medication designed to keep a tiny hole in her heart from closing.?That hole between the two upper chambers of the heart, present in all newborns and which begins closing immediately at birth, was allowing oxygenated blood to mix, keeping her alive. They put her on oxygen and began monitoring her SpO2, the amount of oxygen in her blood.?A healthy person’s SpO2 sits around 98%.?In the minutes after Laila was born her SpO2 dropped and dropped until it hit 60%, before slowly clawing its way back to around 70%, where it stabilized.?

For the next two hours I watched as a team of incredible nurses prepared Laila for transport to CHLA.?Eventually a critical care transport team arrived and placed Laila on a special gurney. As they were preparing to wheel Laila to the waiting ambulance, the lead nurse calmly stated, “Oh, she stopped breathing.”?My heart, naturally already in the depths of my stomach, sunk even further. The nurse leaned in and gently slapped Laila’s cheek and then dug her knuckles into her chest.?“Okay, she’s breathing again,” she stated matter-of-factly while I did my best to maintain a facade of stoicism.?

Throughout the transport to CHLA, which was only about ten minutes, Laila would stop breathing about a dozen times.?Riding shotgun in the ambulance and leaving Indra behind in the maternity ward, I couldn’t help but grow increasingly nervous that Laila would not survive on my watch.

An all-star team received Laila at CHLA and immediately continued the work to stabilize her. The plan was to attempt the arterial switch procedure on day four, allowing her lungs enough time to decompress post-delivery and provide the surgeon with enough room in her chest cavity to do the work.?

Six hours later a cardiologist approached me. Laila was not responding well to their care and they would have to conduct a procedure to enlarge the hole in her heart. It was not entirely a surprise - we knew it might happen. The doctors whisked Laila away at around 8 p.m., and one of the nurses encouraged me to go get some fresh air.?They’d notify me when she was done.

I called Indra, told her what was happening and checked in on her own recovery. She was with her sister and doing well. I disappeared outside, hoping to find a nearby bar so I could have a beer and decompress. Finding none, I walked out of a grocery store with a tall-boy can of beer in a paper bag.??

Sitting on a bench near CHLA I drank that beer and cried.?

My phone rang and a nurse requested that I return to the room. Minutes later - after clearing COVID screening in the lobby - walked into Laila’s room. But Laila wasn’t there. Instead, the cardiologist stood there alone, surrounded by all the machines and medications that had previously been keeping Laila alive.

In that moment I thought Laila was dead. They called me back to the room and this doctor was standing there to inform me that something had gone horribly wrong. My face must have betrayed the flood of grief I was feeling, because the doctor reached out his hand.

“Your daughter is fine, Mr. Wood. The procedure went according to plan.”?

The procedure went according to plan, but it did not have the intended effect.?The doctors and nurses still struggled to keep her vitals stable and over the next 36 hours I watched as they pumped her with this drug and that, all while her blood pressure, SpO2, heart rate, and blood markers see-sawed wildly up and down.?

At one point the following evening, Laila took a dramatic downward turn.?For 90 minutes her SpO2 stayed around 30% and with each minute the medical team became more frantic. Her organs were being starved of oxygen. Watching it unfold in the room was like an out-of-body experience. Finally I pulled the doctor aside and asked the question I couldn’t shake -

“If Laila survives this, will she be permanently brain damaged?”

The doctor assured me that for the moment she was okay, but that if they didn’t bring her above 50% soon that it would become a major concern. There was nothing I could do but nod my head and step back to continue leaning against the wall, occasionally stepping forward to kiss Laila on the forehead and whisper in her ear.?

For a man that prides himself on action, it was the most helpless I have ever felt in my life. Eager to do something, I called Indra and put my phone near Laila’s head.?For an hour Indra just spoke, a mother cooing her newborn.?

Finally, around 2 a.m., with a combination of over a dozen drugs and her mother’s voice, Laila settled into a precarious steady-state. Her face was so swollen that you could barely make out her features, the intubation tube piercing her lips almost looked as though it could pop it.?

Late the next day Indra was finally able to join me.?I still remember her collapsing over Laila’s acrylic bassinet and touching and kissing her for the first time. To this day the memory of that reunion makes me cry.

36 hours later, Indra and I rose with the sun.?It was yet another night with little to no sleep on an ICU couch and reclining chair, which my tall frame comically draped over. This was it - the morning of Laila’s surgery.

We spent an hour huddled over her bassinet, kissing her forehead and putting our palms on her chest, over her heart.?Finally, a team of nurses arrived to wheel her out.?We walked alongside the bed, down what seemed like the longest hallway in the world.?Finally, we reached a set of automatic double doors, which opened as we drew close.?“This is where you have to say goodbye,” one of the nurses said. It seemed like an odd phrase to use.?

I swear to God, I don’t know that I have ever had to work so hard to muster strength and courage.?Knowing that my little baby girl was about to go have her chest ripped open, be placed on a heart-lung bypass machine, and have every artery of her heart disconnected, was simply too much to bear.?

We stifled sobs and wiped away tears. We leaned over to whisper in her ear and kiss her forehead. Then the nurses wheeled her away and the double doors closed behind her, leaving Indra and me in a long sterile hallway, alone.

For the next four hours we sat in a waiting room in the Heart Center, nervously checking our watches and furtively glancing at the other parents.?A nurse came in and told us that Laila was on the warming table getting closed up, and that the surgeon would be in shortly to speak to us about the procedure.?

There was a wave of relief, though we did our best to mute it in front of the other parents. But “shortly” would turn first into an hour, and then a second.?Our relief turned to dread. Was Laila okay??Did something go wrong when they were wrapping up the surgery??

It turns out there was. While running some diagnostics following the arterial switch, the cardiologist determined that he didn’t like how one of the arteries was performing. Laila was put back onto the heart-lung bypass and the surgeon returned to dig back in.?All of this happened while we counted each minute since the nurse had come in.

Finally, we were brought back into Laila’s room and saw our little girl, alive. Her chest was still open - the heart and lungs were so swollen from the procedure that they could not close her sternum. And so, for the next four or five days, whenever we leaned in to kiss Laila’s head we would stare straight through the translucent tape and see her little heart beating.?

One by one, machines and medications were gradually removed from Laila. Her heart, now fixed, could sustain her little body. Eventually a surgeon came in and closed Laila’s chest and within a day or two she slowly regained consciousness.?It was the first time Indra and I had seen her conscious since the moment she was born.?

Because Los Angeles was in the midst of last year’s winter COVID surge, I could not stay at CHLA with Indra. So each night I would return home, hopeful to sneak a kiss from our two-year old Valija. The 45 minute drive allowed me the chance to decompress. I’m sure plenty of drivers looked over and wondered why the big guy in the truck with a Marine Corps sticker was sobbing at the wheel.

As Laila’s recovery at CHLA continued we faced our final challenge. She’d been on fentanyl, one of the most dangerous and addictive opioids on the planet, for the first twelve days of her life. When she was removed from her fentanyl drip she went into severe opioid withdrawal. Laila became inconsolable - wailing at the top of her lungs for 24 hours a day.?

Indra - with her mother’s intuition - knew something was wrong. Eventually the nursing team discovered they’d made a mistake in their fentanyl weaning protocol.?Unfortunately, that meant that Laila was fiending like a street junkie and was placed on methadone.

As COVID continued to rage, CHLA was receiving more and more pediatric COVID patients and their primary ICU was overflowing. Eventually, a pretty drastic decision was made - Laila would be sent home with us, and we would be responsible for administering her final week of methadone.?

A nursing team came in and trained me how to precisely dose the methadone - it’s so powerful that a dosing mistake could have had serious consequences.?24 hours later we were discharged, some of the nurses clearly uncomfortable that we were being sent home with a three week old in withdrawals and a bottle of methadone.

Sometimes when I hear people talk about COVID being overblown, or worse, a fantasy crisis, I think of that moment we were allowed to leave the hospital with a three-week old child and a bottle of methadone.?

Today Laila is a healthy, happy, thriving baby and a total chunkmonster. I pull her out of the crib each morning and when I lay her down to change her diaper, I open up her onesie and reveal the scar spans the length of her sternum.?The scar rarely makes me sad - mostly because Laila smiles and giggles the entire time.?

Instead we feel blessed, because we know that Laila is going to lead a long and fulfilled life.?I’m confident that she will wear that scar with pride and will live her life eager to earn the new lease on life she received. I cannot wait to watch her grow and thrive.

Thank you to all of our family, friends, and strangers that supported us through the most challenging moment of our lives.?Thank you to the doctors and surgeons that saved Laila’s life.?Most of all, thank you to the nurses and technicians, whose relentless competence, poise, and professionalism kept Laila with us when all hell was breaking loose.?