Alex S.D. Mendoza

Sept. 26, 2005 - Oct. 26, 2005

Can you believe you would be 6!!

This is the age where you would have been finding yourself, what you like what you don't. Your favorite color, making friends, and learning so much at school. I can't believe 6 years ago you came into our lives and I can't believe that it has been 6 years since we have had you as a part of our everyday. We love and miss you so much baby boy...tickle toes...stay sweet baby mine.

Below is a poem his Aunt Milly wrote for his funeral and holds true then and now...

My Dearest Little Alex,

From the moment I seen your face I knew right from the start, that you would hold a special place deep with in my heart. When you came into this world you fought with all you had, then God decided to take you Home and now were all so sad. But I know that your in heaven now safe in God’s arms, with no pain or suffering, and never any harm. You know exactly who I am, I need not speak of names, just give your Papaw a great big hug as well as Uncle James. I know I speak for everyone when I say you will be sadly missed, but the words on this paper are from your Aunt Milly, and I seal them with a Kiss…

I love you….


You never said I'm leaving, You never said goodbye, You were gone before I knew it, And only God knew why, A million times I needed you, A million times I cried, If love alone could have saved you, You never would have died, In life I loved you dearly, In death I love you still, In my heart you hold a place, That no one could ever fill, It broke my heart to lose you, But you didn't go alone, For part of me went with you,
The day God took you home... 

At 1:01pm on Sept. 26th my baby was born. Alex S. D. Mendoza 5lbs. 9ozs and 19 inches long.  I laid there crying hoping my baby would cry with me… I never heard a sound. The pediatric team was working on him and immediately intipated him. The machines were alarming and I know my heart rate was racing… my poor baby. The doctors took him away to the NICU and his father and nana followed right along.

By 6 o’clock that night I was wheeled to Children’s to see my son for the first time. It was so scary to see him laying there naked with tubes everywhere. He was on the Oscillator; he didn’t do well on the regular ventilator. I stayed for a while, I remember being so scared not knowing what to do; the world was zooming by so quickly, the doctors were talking so fast.  He was still stable, but I was confused as to what was going on. That was the last night I was confused and I remember going to bed happy thinking at least he doesn’t need ECMO.

The next morning his oxygen was starting to decline. He was only oxygenating at 80%, and it was decreasing rapidly.  My fear of him going onto ECMO was bad because I knew that was the last thing they could do for him. By noon everyone was there and they were ready to place him on ECMO. He was too unstable to move out of the NICU room so they turned it into an OR room by sterilizing everything. At 1:11pm just over 24hrs from birth little Alex was put on ECMO. We weren’t aloud to see him for a couple of hours but Dr. Shanti, who turned out being an angel in disguise explained the risks of bleeding internally because of the heparin he had to be on. When we were finally let back there to see him he looked so helpless. He had a machine hooked to him through canellas that were inserted into his neck through his arteries. This took the blood from his body into the machine which oxygenated and pumped the blood back to his body, this aloud his heart and lungs to rest. He was bleeding from his neck bad because of the blood thinner, and he was really pale from his oxygen getting so low. Also he was having extreme blood pressure issues because his heart didn’t have much room to work because all the organs in his chest. 

The next day Alex had gone from my 5lb 9oz little man to a swollen 8lbs +. Over night his blood pressures were really low which didn’t pump enough blood to his kidneys. This almost stopped his kidneys from working and he wasn’t urinated very well. Little do you know how much pee can affect a person, urine and blood pressure numbers became my focus for several days! He continued to get very swollen and it seemed to be so painful, but he was on so much medicine he wasn’t awake or coherent at all.

By Monday Dr. Shanti wanted to schedule his surgery but he was really swollen. The doctors thought if they did the surgery it would improve his blood pressure which would help his swelling. They attached another machine to the ECMO machine which would pull any liquid out of his blood. We went 4 days with that machine running off and on because the ECMO machine would shut off due to lack of liquid. I know that sounds weird but Alex was retaining fluid in his tissues between his skin and his muscles not in his blood. So they were pulling liquid off his blood which would thicken his blood and clog up the machine. By Wednesday Dr. Shanti made the decision to go ahead with the surgery on Thursday, even though Alex wasn’t as stable as she would want she feared she would lose her window, as little as it was.

Surgery Day…  We sat there singing him his songs “You are My Sunshine” and “Jesus Loves You”. We talked to him like you would talk to anyone of your children.  He just laid there, motionless, except for his feet and his hands. He would squeeze your finger if you put it in his hand and he would wiggle his feet and legs if you tickled his feet. His nurse (our favorite) Tonya, nicknamed him “Tickle Toes”. He was started to become use to the pain medicine and would start to become a little more coherent. He didn’t open his eyes, just wiggled some. Now at this moment I was so scared to walk away from him. I didn’t want to have a doctor come to me and tell me he didn’t pull through, because all the doctors were warning us that he wasn’t stable and these weren’t the conditions they would prefer to do the surgery under but they felt they were running out of time. If the surgery was completed they truly believed his blood pressure would stabilize and he would respond better to the ECMO. So I put my son’s life in their hands… I walked away crying, I prayed so hard for the next 4 and ½ hours.  Tonya, the nurse I mentioned before, came out a couple hours later to let us know things were going okay, just going to take a little longer than I expected. Finally around 5pm Dr. Shanti came from behind the double doors.  She said Alex pulled through well, no real complications. They found abnormal lung tissue on the left side where his organs were. They didn’t find much real usable lung tissue and he had his stomach, intestines, spleen, and partial liver in his chest cavity. He had no left side of his diaphragm so they had to use a patch and they put a chest tube to drain the blood and fluid. They also put one where the surgery was performed to drain the blood and fluid from his abdomen. 

The day after surgery was very rocky and unstable. His blood pressure didn’t get better in fact it got a lot worst. He was losing so much blood they were transfusing him almost every other hour. In the morning he was bruised on his entire left side from his hip to his head. His left eye was swollen over, his lips were puffy and he was drooling because he couldn't close his mouth and all around looked worst than he ever did before. That was the day we were told we had the sickest child in the hospital and his chances were very bleak. 

His swelling and bruising continued to get worse all day, I watched him go from pink to a black and blue baby within hours.  Over the next week he started to improve slowly. By the following Thursday he was making leaps and bounds. By Friday he opened his eye (the right one because the left always was swollen). He looked at me. I stared at him and I knew he knew who I was and that I loved him. When I talked he looked around the room for me, he followed my voice. The whole weekend was beautiful and by Sunday he opened both his eyes. 

We had his first trial off the machine on Monday and he did really well so they scheduled another trial off for Tuesday. Jeff, the head ECMO tech, did mention his blood pressure did drop some during the trial, but nothing too significant. The following trial off was done Tuesday morning at around 8 am. He sailed right though. By this point in his hospital stay Alex had become a staple. The nurses and doctors loved him and were really pulling for him. By 5pm, 21 days after being on ECMO, Alex was taken off.

The first night was rocky, he instantly started to have blood pressure issues again, but he was stabilizing. By Wednesday he started to go downhill, all his meds were increased, he started to swell again because right before he was taken off he was back down to my 5lb 9oz bundle of joy. By Thursday Dr. Shanti wanted to put him back on ECMO. Un-heard-of. They had only re-canulated one other baby in the 20 years of practice at Children’s. Dr. Shanti decided to hold off and try a new blood pressure medicine. It worked for the night but the next day he started to decrease his pressures again. All weekend we fought with a new medicine added and him responding but for a short while then decreasing until he was receiving 23 different medicines in total (half blood pressure meds and half other things). The whole weekend was miserable. 

By Monday Dr. Shanti returned she said she had researched things this weekend and had found a new medicine that had to help and it did…again for just a short while.

Tuesday morning Alex was just as swollen as he was after his surgery and he wasn’t urinating because his pressures were so low. His kidneys were shutting down and he began to turn yellow. Jaundice, his liver was failing too. Everything seemed to turn yellow, his drool, his drainage, everything, even his little toes. 

I held my son for the first and what would be last time while he was alive that night. He was so warm and so soft. Exactly what any baby should be. I remember rubbing his soft hair against my cheek… I sang him to sleep that night. I let him know that I loved him and that mommy wasn’t mad that he was tired. He needed to go and I sang him to sleep. He past away at 7:43am on Oct. 26, 2005 in my arms but remains forever in our hearts.

I love my son and he will always be missed but for the ones who were not able to meet him this is his story, he is real, he is my son, and forever now my families Guardian Angel.