It's A Very Sad Thing...

By Tabitha Irvin

In memory of:
Jeremy Robert Irvin
02/07/97-05/27/97.

Date: Thu, 27 May 1999

Today is the two year anniversary of my son's death. He was 3 1/2 months old. He was at the babysitter's house. I got that dreaded call at work at 10:30 in the morning. They said that they had put him down for a nap, and that they had noticed that he had stopped breathing, and they called the ambulance. I heard the ambulance siren in the background. I rushed to the hospital. He was on Life-support when I got to the hospital. My husband worked 75 miles away, and the 1 1/2 hours that it took him to get to the hospital were the worst in my life. My mother was there, the babysitter was there... I did not know what to do, so when I got the option of flying him to a children's hospital in Fresno, CA I went for it. The hospital in my small rural town of Bishop, CA was not equipped to handle such an emergency.

My husband flew with Jeremy on the airplane, and my sister-in-law, and mother drove with me to the hospital. I was hysterical, and I swear that during the 7 hour drive to Fresno that I saw angels. Maybe that was one of the things that helped me, because I knew that if he died he was going to a better place. When I arrived at the children's hospital it was 9:30 PM, they still had Jeremy on Life-support, I was hoping that by that time he would have made some improvements. I asked the nurse if he would get better, she said nothing. The doctors and a social worker took us into a little room. That's where they told me the bad news. Until that moment I was confident that Jeremy would survive. The doctors told me that Jeremy had stopped breathing for 15 minutes, and that the only thing that was keeping him alive was the machines. They asked if we wanted them to resuscitate him should his heart stop beating. They said that if he did live, he would be on Life-support for the rest of his life. My father-in-law was flying down from Spokanne, WA and would arrive at 1:00 AM. At 12:30 Jeremy's body was getting cold, and we knew that it would not be long. At 1:20 AM my husband's father arrived at the hospital, and the baby passed away at 1:30 AM on May 27, 1997. The nurses brought two rocking chairs into the room and they handled the baby to me. That is my last memory of being with my baby. I will never forget him, and the pain will never go away. I remember what it felt like to hold him, I remember the way that he looked at me. It's a very sad thing.