One year ago today, Corey and I sat down in Lynnea's hospital room with three of her doctors and had one of the most difficult discussions that any parents could ever have to have regarding our child. Lynnea had just proven to everyone that she could no longer handle the work of breathing on her own. EEG and MRI results had shown that she had extensive brain damage after her episode of cardiac arrest. There just weren't any options left for her. So, the five of us had a lengthy conversation about when and how Lynnea would die.
Today we went to the U of M to meet with Dr. St. Louis to go over Lynnea's autopsy results. Really, there was nothing particularly insightful about the findings: the loss of her left pulmonary veins was the primary reason that nothing more could be done for her. In some ways, this conversation shared some commonalities with the conversation we had a year ago; in both cases, at the center of things was Lynnea's death. It was a little strange to go to a clinic visit for Lynnea without having her along; it clearly felt like something was missing as we sat in the examining room waiting for the doctor to come in. It was also a little hard to think about the fact that this really was the very last appointment that we will ever go to regarding Lynnea. Fortunately, this year's conversation did not have the same heavy tone that last year's did; in fact, our time spent chit-chatting with Dr. St. Louis was quite pleasant, and it was good to get to have this conversation with someone that had played such an important role in Lynnea's life.
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