Daymon Gilbert Hoffman, came into this world on October 13th, 1997. I was expecting my third child,and we were very excited, I have two children from my first marriage, and although my ex-husband is not a part of the childrens life. And Brian has totally taken responsibility for them, and thinks of them as his children, this was his first born. At 3:45 pm, Daymon was born. He weighed 9 lbs, 4ozs, and was 20 1/2 inches long. He was perfect!
The day before at 11:00 am, I had a went to the hospital because my water broke, the hospital staff checked me and told me it hadn't. I knew in my heart it had, this was my third child, and I had a large gush of brownish fluid, followed by a constant leaking. But they said I was just anxious to have my baby, and told me to go home. I did, and leaked fluid all night long. The next day I went in and made them recheck me, and found out my water had broke. After culturing the fluid they told me there was merchonium present. At birth Daymon had aspirated some fluid and had to have an it suctioned out. I remember asking while they were doing it, if he would be ok? The doctor told me he would be fine. So Brian and I didn't worry about it, I guess we trusted our doctor to much.
The next day, just before we left, one of the OB nurses came in and took Daymon's temp and told me I was over bundling him. She unwrapped him from his blanket and came in 10 minutes later and took his temp again and it was fine. I questioned this as I was always told that a baby needed to be kept warm, certainly in the late fall when the temps in Wisconsin require an adult to wear a coat.
Daymon was home for 5 days, before I took him to the ER and insisted that something was wrong. I had called his pediatrican 3 times in the last 5 days asking why he was running a fever and asked if she would look at him, she said she would see him at his 2 week checkup.. After examining him and taking x-rays, they told me he had pnumonia and would have to be admitted. So on October 19th, Daymon began his fight for his life.
On the night he was admitted, the nurses, an anistetic nurse, and a doctor tried to get an IV in. After poking him 9 times they gave up. At one point I asked an anestetic Nurse to put it in his head, I was quickly told that he was the professional at it, and thatthey dont do that. So Daymon went all night without an IV, that he desparetly needed. That night Brian and I were up all night, Daymon's monitors went off constantly, it kept reading that Daymon had low SAT rates and that his respirations were high. Something no one seemed to be worried about but us. The next morning the nurse assigned to Daymon, got someone to come in and put an IV in his scalp, and put him on oxygen, because of low SAT rates, she did this withot our Ped's permission, as she felt he needed them both very badly and couldn't wait for the Dr's OK. Judy became Daymon's primary nurse from that point on, she went above and beyond her job for us. On October 21st, Judy suggested we ask for a pediatric consult, and basically told us she didn't think our current doctor was doing a good job. So we got a new Doctor and things really started happening. A nurse was assigned to just Daymon, rather then 2-3 other children as well. Tests were run every hour, rather then twice a day.
On October 22nd we were told that Daymon had to be intubated and that he would have to be moved to Theda Clark, as Mercy wasn't equiped for this kind of care. Three days after being transfered to Theda, he was transfered again, this time to Childrens Hospital in Millwaukee.
Once there he was put on a ECMO machine (extracorpeal membrane oxygenator- lung-heart machine a life preserving procedure for infants which does the work for an infant, allowing the lung and heart time to heal.)
