Tragedy avoided, Miracle born. Part II

So I have gotten myself to the point where I am stuck, away from family and friends. I am taking care of my mistakes, but at the time, it was of little help with depression and such. For the first time in my life (and only time since) I write many letters. They are all to Denise, mostly whining and moaning, a bit of mushiness from time to time. I'm sure your normal jailhouse letter fair. With the birth of my first child due any day and my sentence only two weeks longer, I am looking forward to a lot.

Then a twist of fate. One of the guards comes to the door of the pod and calls my name. Not being a meal time, I am wondering what this is all about. I am told that Denise is in labor and in transit to the hospital. I ask him if there is anyway, since I am a trustee and only have two weeks to go, that I can be there. He told me he would find out. After much talking with everyone from the sentencing judge to the jail administrator, it boiled down to one problem. The jail administrator had the final say, and his policy would allow an escort for that type of thing. One problem with that, they couldn't do it because I was too close to getting out. That was the craziest thing I had ever heard. I was a trustee that worked outside of the jail, walking from the jail unescorted everyday to the radio shop. And I couldn't go see my son born?

Unfortunately, that was not the heart-wrenching moment, that was still to come.

On October 2, 1990 in Gainesville Florida at Shands Teaching Hospital on the University of Florida's campus my first natural child was born. His name was Robert Jesse Grissom III, named after myself and my father. At over 8 pounds and being full term, he was as normal as babies get. Unfortunately during birth he got fluids into his lungs that damaged them. Upon determining this, and finding that one of his lungs had shut down, the doctors determined that his lungs were going to completely shut down.

Now up until that time, with the specific problems they were having with Robert, the only choice they had was a lung transplant. That, for a newborn, was an almost impossible task.

Luckily many things in the previous two years gave them a new, at the time experimental, option. There was a new technology called ECMO (see here and here for good explanations) that had been developed and installed in a few hospitals nationwide in 1989. Also in that year the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children & Women in Orlando Florida was opened. They had an ECMO machine. The ECMO program at Arnold Palmer Hospital was the first of four in the state to provide the modified heart-lung bypass technology to infants and children with acute, severe respiratory or cardiac disease. Needless to say, they immediately rushed him out of Denise's labor room, up to the roof into an awaiting helicopter. They rushed him to Orlando, a two hour drive by car, in twenty-two minutes. They hooked him up to the ECMO machine in the intensive care unit. The hope at that time was to keep him on it long enough to allow his lungs to recover. At that point, they gave him a 15% chance of survival.

I honestly, with all the emotional turmoil back then, cannot remember how I found out about all of this at the time. I did find out, and again was denied the leave from my incarceration. Frustrated to say the least, I had no choice. Not only did I miss my first born's birth, but I may not ever be able to meet him. Emotions of rage, terror, and sadness, flowed through me in ever changing waves. I was stuck, by myself, and could not even console my wife in her moment of need.

Denise visited me a few days later. In tears she filled me in, he was stable but still critical. Doctors still weren't sure about survival. My time in the now "hell hole" passed, and Denise awaited at the bottom of the pedestrian ramp leading up to the jail. We celebrated and hugged for a moment. We went home and had a "real" meal. The next morning we would go to Orlando and visit Robert.

The most heart-wrenching moment was yet to come...