‘We made the call: cut the ventilator’
“We didn’t know what to expect. They told us it might be a stillbirth. I had a C-section at about seven months so he wouldn’t have to struggle any more than needed. And Oliver was born on March 20, 2019. It was a really beautiful morning. He cried, and I was like, OK, we’re going to make it. We are the exception. We are that very small percent of babies that make it. But then his lung collapsed. His heart rate dropped. He got intubated while we were still in the delivery room, and he was taken to the NICU.”
What followed was a medical odyssey over nearly three months, with more bad days than good. Baby Oliver received several forms of dialysis in an attempt to save his failing kidneys. He also was treated for infections and other complications. “There were times we thought, oh, we’re good. But there were so many other times when we thought, he’s not going to make it.
“On that last day, we got a call. ‘Hey, his heart has stopped beating several times now. How do you want us to proceed?’ The hardest thing for us was that there was no black or white. It was not defined. We didn’t know what it would mean in terms of his developmental growth later as a child. Is he going to have learning delays? Is he going to be able to play with our two healthy children? The doctors calculated he would need like three kidney transplants over time in order to have any chance of a decent life. It didn’t hit us until he was dying, really dying, that you know what, that’s not a life we want him to have. We realized then that the do-nothing choice means we’re going to save him from being sick for the rest of his life. So we made the call, this decision no parent should ever have to make: cut the ventilator. He was six days away from being three months old.”
— Marilyn Heredia
Oliver passed away on June 14, 2019.
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