P.W. (Part 1)

P.W. is actually my son Patrick Wayne. He was born in North Madison, Ohio in 1968 a healthy, robust 9 lb (forgot the oz. but I am sure his Mother has not) boy. About six weeks after his birth we took him for a checkup and the Dr. showed some concern. Apparently he had a sound in his heart that was not normal and further tests were needed. To make a very long part of this story short, PW was destined to spend a great deal of his short life in and out of hospitals and in a great deal of pain.

The Ohio weather and humidity were not good for him so we decided to move to Greeley, Colorado where the air was much drier and the University Medical Center was located in Denver with top notch doctors. Without going into a lot of detail let it suffice that PW continued to live in pain and discomfort as well as in and out of the medical center almost weekly. Mom spent the most time with him at the hospital while I took care of his brother.

PW was a Daddy's boy. It seemed that he knew his life would be short and could not grow up fast enough. Of all our children PW learned to speak the fastest, however diaper training was a different story. He refused to go to the toilet. It was a joke in our house between my wife and I, although at the time I did not see the humor. Cheryl would have a meeting or something to go to and I would watch the boys. That darned Pat would wait until his mother had left the house and then mess his diaper like he had been saving for at least a week or longer. Oh the messes that kid had for me. We even tried to fake him out. Cheryl left one day, drove around the block and waited the appropriate amount of time and then came back to the house. Normally he would let me have it within 5 minutes of when she left. Not this time. Nothing. So we decided he was going to be okay and she left. It wasn't two minutes and that little pup blasted me again with a messy diaper. If he hadn't been so sick I would have killed him.

Night time he would scare the dickens out of me. Have you ever gone to sleep and suddenly you feel that something is out of place and you wake up? Pat would get out of his bed, come into our room and stand right beside me about three inches from my face. Of course I would let out a yell, scare him and Mom and everybody would be upset then.

Sleeping in his bed was very uncomfortable for him so he would often sleep on the floor. We finally figured out it was because it was cool for his body. Many times he would come into our room and curl up on the floor right next to me. The first time he did that I jumped out of bed, not knowing he was there, and landed right in the middle of him. It didn't take long for me to start checking the floor before I got out of bed.

While living in Ohio my Father came to visit us and being religious people we asked him to give Pat a blessing to help him with his sickness. He blessed him and when he was finished he turned to me and said, "He won't live." Well, that was a heck of a statement. My Father and I never got along too well and I figured he was using Pat to get back at me. I was upset. Shortly before Pat's death I asked some elders from our church to assist me in giving him a blessing. When I had finished I too knew Pat would not live. That is a hard realization to accept. You always hope for a miracle of some sort. (More about this later)

The doctors never did give us much more than a 50-50 chance that he would survive past 18 years. Their hopes were that in that time medical science would progress enough to provide better chances. We were told that Pat was a text book case meaning that nothing in the text books covered his problem and he was breaking new ground for them.

I have to leave the story here at this point for two reasons. One, it is quite long and two, I have an appointment in a few minutes and must close for today. Pat's medical problem was this; his arteries were reversed entering and leaving his heart plus his mitral valve was missing completely. The mitral valve is the one that prevents blood re-entering the lungs after it has received the oxygen. For this valve to not close meant the person could literally blow his lungs apart from the hearts contractions. ( I think I said that right)

Tomorrow I will tell more about our times with Pat and some of the people's reactions to our problems. If I can get his picture scanned I will include it also. He was as good looking as his Father. (Err, I mean Mother.)