Posted by on Aug 4, 2011 in Personal | 2 comments

One year ago today, we got the scare of our lives when we received a call from the nanny that our boy Kingston wasn’t responding. So started a several month long struggle watching our little 1 year old deal with brain surgery and trying to fight his way back to doing what he had already learnt.

So what really happened? I’ve been a little closed lip about it since there is technically still a case-open about it. But now a year later, it’s likely it won’t ever get resolved so I might as well give some details out to the “world” in the event it might help other parents with this situation. I just won’t mention details of the actual people involved… (beware some graphic details and bad language further ahead)

In a nutshell, what happened was that we had just started taking Kingston over to this new nanny ran a home daycare only about 2 blocks away from our home. We did our due diligence…we checked that she was licensed with the State. She had apparently been doing it for 25 years. And we paid a couple of personal visits with the place to see how it was run.

Everything checked out well and so a decision was made to take Kingston there because it was so convenient for him to be nearby.

Flash forward to the day of the incident, I was told only on THAT morning that the nanny needed to take her mother to the doctors so she was intending to take all of the kids out to the park that day. Yeah I had a problem with that, but we knew prior to this incident that she DID take kids out to the park from time to time in a big van with children seats. That morning caught me by surprise, I had to attend some meetings that morning so I told myself, “well, she’s licensed, and she’s been doing this for a long time so she must know what she’s doing” so I pulled out Kingston’s car seat and said my goodbye.

Right around lunch time that day I get a panicked call from the Nanny. Kingston had apparently “slipped behind her”, fallen on his head, and is now unresponsive to calls after falling asleep on the way home. I didn’t panic at first, thinking that Kingston’s just a deep sleeper sometimes, but I told her to call 911 just in case (why didn’t she figure out to call herself?) and I’d rush over. I later found out between the call and the time I made it over took 2 minutes; but it felt like a long time.

I’ll never forget the feeling of seeing my little boy in the back of the ambulance moving his tiny arms like he was swimming in molasses. It definitely wasn’t normal. At that moment the seriousness of the situation hit me and I wanted to throw up all my internal organs. I wouldn’t want to wish this feeling on my worst enemy.

Flash past the gory details. Kingston was diagnosed with a subdural brain hemorrhage; one of the main blood vessels of his brain had ruptured and the blood was pushing against one side of his brain. They needed to operate on him immediately. Turned out to be a 3 or 4 hour surgery that day and his doctor eventually told us there were times during the surgery where he had to literally hold Kingston’s brain down with his hands so he wouldn’t lose too much blood. There were a couple of sketchy moments where he might very well have gone. (So hard to even type this out! Yikes)

Fast forward — he obviously survives the treatment. My wife ends up almost living at the hospital that entire month. But given that little kids are so resilient, Kingston recovers at what might be considered a miraculous rate and today he’s no worse for wear. He’s got a killer scar on his head that you might only notice if you hunt for it, and he’s now left-handed (from the incident or natural we’ll never know)

As far as the nanny situation goes…there was an investigation opened that first day. Honestly my first reaction that day was sorrow for the Nanny believe it or not. For all I know, this was just a crazy fucked up accident and so she must feel horrible. She cried on the phone apologizing to me the next day. But we cut off contact with her the minute both friends and professionals later told us there was somethings that didn’t fit right with the story.

How does a child get something as serious as a subdural brain hemorrhage with just a slip or fall? The doc told us it was within possibility that shit just happens once in a while. Rare, but possible. But an injury that extensive is typically conducive to someone getting an impact as major as a car crash. Yet there was no visible signs of any fractures or bruises anywhere.

One possibility is shaken baby syndrome. Did someone get frustrated with Kingston so as to shake him enough to case this kind of injury. Yeah definitely something they looked at. Yet, again, there were no immediate signs that pointed in that direction either (e.g., no neck bruises, no pattern of abuse). He had retinal hemorrhaging too we later found with added some fuel to the fire.

What happened? It was so frustrating for us. I’d spend my days (I still do) bouncing between feeling sad that it was just a terrible accident to feeling furious at the possibility someone did something to my kid intentionally.

We’ve been leaning on professionals to help sort out the situation for us. Everyone from HPD, child welfare, lawyers, etc had a role in looking at the situation up till now and the result has been inconclusive. Officially the result as it stands today is that “it’s definitely NOT an accident, but we can’t determine who or how this happened”.  How do you deal with a statement like that? When the victim is too young to speak for himself, we may NEVER resolve this case.

And so here we are today. I’m just concentrating on enjoying each extra day with Kingston since the incident.

As for the nanny?  She got her license revoked. That’s about all we know. Bottom line is for you new parents: A licensed daycare doesn’t mean too much when it’s all said and done. When shit happens, it seems the worse they can do is pull the license? It’s almost detrimental to have a licensed daycare because you get a false sense of security thinking that your child is protected by the State. It’s like the State basically hands someone permission to watch more kids than they can handle.

If there has been any silver lining to this situation. I’m so proud of my little guy for surviving such a scary ordeal at his young age. AND, I now have so much more faith in people I’ve come to know over the years. So many clients and friends, even complete strangers, had offers of help during this ordeal. We felt so much love for Kingston. I’ll be sure he knows that when he gets older.

Give your kids a big hug today.