What Happened to Finn
THE BEGINNING
Friday June 5th Finn spiked a fever, it broke in the night and never returned. The 6th & 7th he was sick with a stomach bug. Monday the 8th he felt a bit better. Tuesday the 9th he bounced downstairs, I feel all the way better! He asked to go to the park, then doubled over in pain.
Last summer Finn broke his arm falling from the top of a 20 foot slide. We pulled imbedded bark chips out of his forehead, while he struggled to breath. That moment was nowhere near the pain I saw him in the morning of June 9th, 2026.
It was a 25 minute drive to Nampa's urgent care. Finn asked if he was dying. I didn't know I was lying when I told him no. Urgent care saw us immediately, said appendicitis, and rushed us to the adjoining emergency department (ED) for a proper diagnose.
We were made to sit in the waiting room for 45 minutes before being seen. Finn went from being afraid he was dying to pleading with me to let him die. "I want to die", "my body can't hold this", "I wish I was a different person", "why aren't they helping me?", "let me die" He sobbed and I struggled to not sob with him.
When the ED finally took him back for evaluation it was pain meds, tests and debating for hours on whether or not it was appendicitis. Ultimately they said just a stomach bug and told us to go home. If he spikes another fever or the pain gets worse again, bring him back in.
I felt helpless. It felt wrong, but without recourse I took Finn home and tucked him into bed. Finn never had another episodes of acute pain, or fever. He just slept.
The next morning, Wednesday June 10th, Finn maintained his stomach hurt but not as bad as before. He was having double vision and said through sluggish speech: my eyes won't let me look where I want to. Talking seemed to take great effort. This prompted a call to his neurologist.
I discussed Finn's week with neurology and while they weren't concerned about seizures, they were concerned. They urged me to take Finn to his PCP the next morning unless there was drastic improvement, and to do a blood test that night to check his seizure medication levels.
Neurology will often order routine blood tests to check Finn's levels. We'd had this blood test ordered two weeks prior but due to travel and sickness hadn't done it yet. These tests have to be done at a specific time of night, which makes scheduling tricky. This information may seem random but it is the first miracle that saved Finn's life.
Finn slept and slept all day until 5pm that evening, when he woke to vomit bile. At 7:40 pm we did his routine blood draw. At 8:45 pm I got a call from the on call Neurologist. The blood work had came back with a critically low result for C02. So low they couldn't measure it. They had tried. Twice. "his labs are indicating severe dehydration. You need to get him to the Emergency Department as soon as possible"
We've taken Finn to the ED many times only to be given IV hydration, told there's nothing they can do, and sent home. I assumed this trip would be the same. Indie was at camp, Myra was already asleep and Stella was anxious. So, I stayed and Damon took Finn in.
On the 30 minuet drive over Finn threw-up more bile. He started rapid breathing and developed a dry cough. We didn't know it at the time, but his lungs were slowly filling with liquid. We were told later that if we had waited, even minutes, Finn wouldn't have made it. Getting the results to those routine labs gave us enough of a heads up to have a shot at saving his life.
The Boise ED got Finn into a room almost immediately. They noted his rapid breathing, saw he was hypoxic and clocked his blood pressure at 106/35. The attending ED doctor and her charge nurse called in the attending PICU physician and his charge nurse. The small room quickly gathered a collection of people working to stabilize Finn. Once a new person came they never left; X-rays, ultrasounds, questions, and labs ensued.
They started two IVs. One went straight through Finn's shin into his bone marrow, the other was in his arm. The infusions weren't fast enough so they began filling large syringes with fluid and pushing them directly into the ports. They used oxygen to try to elevate Finn's levels but he thought the nose cannula was suffocating him and fought it.
The doctors assumed Finn was in septic shock and believed a possible cause could be appendicitis. They tried to take him for emergency surgery, but the surgeon refused to operate without a CT. The new goal became to stabilize Finn long enough to get him to CT. (He never got to CT)
Damon had kept me updated me via text and I was about 15 mins away from the hospital when I heard they were going to intubate. This was the first time my body started shaking uncontrollably.
EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT
I’ve told the following story again and again but my body still shakes from the shock of it.
The emergency department was silent and slow as I approached the front desk. I asked what room Griffin Hadfield was in. "A1. Just walk down that hall and its the first room on your left."
The hallway was long, dark and eerily quiet. All seemed tucked away for the night except one room at the end. Her doors were splayed open, light and noise seeping out. I could hear the faint scream of monitors, sounding their warnings. Voices called on top of each other. Even doctors spilled out from her doors, crowded at her threshold. I remember thinking: I'm glad that isn't my room as I approached to ask where is room A1?
They looked me over for a second before someone offered, "I'm sorry, you're in there" nodding to the room that was openly bleeding out her crisis.
It was the first time I really looked inside. A dozen medical staff stood shoulder to shoulder working so tightly around a hospital bed that it was impossible to see who laid on it. In the background people rushed or stood along walls; working, watching, waiting. I searched for a face I knew, but found none. It took me a moment to demand the space I needed to squeeze into the room and find Damon. He was tucked far enough away from the spotlight illuminating the crisis that the dark loomed just behind him.
Our eyes met for a second before Damon went back to staring at the monitor declaring in perfect measurement how quickly the life was leaving our sons body. Damon's face was expressionless.
Someone yelled above the shrill of the alarms "he's going to crash, grab the cart" "who's got the defibrillators?" and I knew.
Finn was dying.
I didn't offer a word as I approached Damon and he didn't give any acknowledgment as I took place my beside him. A social worker awkwardly introduced herself, apologizing for the circumstances of our meeting.
I can't convey to you the depth of the tension in that room. Every person doing what they could. The silence was so thick, oppressive, yet everything somehow was still so loud? All I could do was be still and witness what was unfolding.
There are shows about hospital emergencies where the child is dying and the parents, still in the room, lose their minds. I always thought, there's no way the staff would actually let the parents be in there at such a critical moment. Turns out, they do let you be in there. Someone even brought me a chair so I could sit front row to Finn's small body jostling limply in response to their life saving efforts.
"I've never seen anything like this" someone exclaimed when it was their turn to try to secure Finn's airway. There was blood foaming out of his mouth.
When Finn first came to the ED the top priority was to stabilize his blood pressure. He needed fluid, and fast, to save his life. So they filled his body. What they didn't know was the liquid had no where to go. His kidneys were in failure. So when they sedated him (relaxed his body) and prepared to intubate (laying him flat on his back) the liquid swiftly filled his throat and mouth. It made intubation nearly impossible. Two people had tried and failed before I came in.
I've tried on what it might feel like to lose a child before. I thought Finn might be dying at ten months old, the first time he had a seizure. I've seen his limp body before, and been terrified. I've practiced death but nothing I tried on touched what it actually felt like to watch him die.
Never has my body felt the depth of despair I felt in that ED room. It was heavy, convicted, consuming. The loss was so final and visceral. My whole body shivered warm, heart throbbing, tears falling. "how long has he been like this?" I whispered to Damon speaking for the first time. He shook his head, "a few minutes"
Someone from anesthesiology rushed in. He had been elsewhere but stopped mid-procedure to help our Finn. The social worker leaned in again asking if we were okay or wanted anything, to which we both said no.
"I'm in" anesthesiology declared, violently feeding the tube into Finns body. The staff burst into renewed activity; tubes and pumps and wires. They had finally intubated him but his body didn't respond to the ventilator. Finn still didn't have enough oxygen. After several tries with the ventilator someone grabbed a bag, placed it over Finn's mouth and forced air into his body. Blood bubbles sprayed out.
These are the moments my brain asks me to relive again and again. My mind wants me to walk down that hallway, towards the life spilling out of that room. It wants me to touch again the totality and weight of despair, to spend more time lingering on the empty expression on Damon's white face, to feel again the way the tension wove around every person in that room, silent and loud.
Finn's oxygen levels began to come up.
The ED attending knelt in front of me and asked if I understood how we got here. I think I do, but I'd appreciate hearing it from you. We reviewed all they had done up to this point to try to save Finn's life. When she ended the conversation the last two words had finality. "he's stable for now, but you need to know. He is in critical condition." This is another moment my brain has bookmarked for me to replay over and over again.
"I've never seen parents so calm in times like...this" the social worker half laughed, feeling the relief of the moment. Then the PICU attending, Marc, came over and laid his hand on my leg while addressing Damon. I didn't hear anything he said, partly because we hadn't yet met and I was trying to puzzle out if he knew his hand was on my leg.
But yes, I did fall in love with Marc. He was the attending with us from the moment Finn came in to the ED throughout every critical day (and night) in the PICU. He stopped by our room often to answer questions, ask how we were, and offer comfort. Turns out it's hard to not fall in love when someone saves your sons life. Damon is also in love. You're invited to crush as well.
PICU
After planning who would do what if Finn crashed on route to PICU we all squished into an elevator. The only sound was a hand forcing breath, and with it life, for Finn.
Our room was Dr. Seuss. We waited at the threshold of Cat in the Hat's doors for twenty mins while ED and PICU transferred care. Someone eventually led us to seats behind Finn's bed. Hands placed water into ours, then food. "it's going to be a long night. Take care of your bodies, for him".
I asked the room in general if there was something I could have done differently, the answer came with a bite "NO. We do NOT play that game in here. Do not let your mind go there." and I thought, they still think he's going to die.
The PICU physician Marc came in and explained: we don't' know why but we do know his kidneys are in failure. There's a very good chance he'll need dialysis. We'll give him some hours to see if the medications we've given him will kick in. He talked of the liquid crushing Finn's lungs, how they may place drains into his chest cavity to relieve the pressure.
It was 3am and they needed to place a port from Finn's femoral artery to his heart. Damon and I were ushered into a PICU waiting room which had more couches than walls. Left alone for the first time we spoke, and then we didn't speak. There wasn't much to say. We were numb and exhausted. Damon fell asleep and I wondered if Finn would be dead when we returned. They brought us back to Cat in the Hat room at around 4 or 5 in the morning.
It wasn't until mid afternoon the next morning that they discovered Finn was also in heart failure. The damage was extensive. A healthy BNP (a proteins released when the heart is stressed) is below 100. Above 400 you are considered to be in heart failure. Finn's number when first tested was 88,600. At its worst, his heart was operating at 30%. (They considered putting him on ECMO.)
We had multiple doctors combing through Finn's case. I made every one of them answer "if this were to happen again, what could I do differently" just for the comfort of hearing, you did everything right. It doesn't make sense why this happened.
Finn turned yellow and his liver enlarged but they couldn't find an explanation for it. He lost a significant amount of blood they never could account for. Every morning and night at the same time he would inexplicably spike a fever and desaturate. The most pressing question though was, why? Why did it happen in the first place? Finn should not have crashed. No one could explain it.
There was a moment in the PICU, laying against Damon's chest on the couch-bed that I poured out my heart in prayer Heavenly Father, I want him. The flaws and joy and tension, the frustration. I want it. Let me have him? Let me know him? Let me be with him, and see him grow, and let me love him. I just want to keep having the privilege of loving him. Let me be a part of it all, please. Let me have him.
It was a moment of acceptance and surrender for me. I started sobbing for the reality of what we were losing to lose our Finn. Our family would be so completely altered in a way nothing could ever fill. Gone. Living the embodiment of that reality has softened me. It was a gift and I hope continue to use it to become a human who is quick to cherish life and be unreasonably tender even as life gets hard.
After this prayer I started sobbing and could not stop. I sobbed on Damon's shoulder for what I felt like was an generous amount of time. Then I sat up to collect myself. But myself refused to be collected. So, I sobbed my way to bathroom, to splash cold water on my face, and then sobbed my way back to the PICU room. I can't remember how or when I stopped crying that night.
Anxiety was constant in the PICU though the evenings ushered in a level that was unbearable. I didn't feel God throughout our hospital stay (aside from two distinct experiences) It feels shameful to admit that no peace miraculously overcame my experience. It just felt shitty, and dark, and outside of my control. I was drowning and relied on the people around us to offer prayer on behalf of our family. I realized to witness the love and actions of others, strangers and friends to our family, spoke more of God's love and reached me deep.
RONALD MCDONALD
The RM House was overwhelming in the best way. The first two times it was offered I thought, surely we wont be in hospital long enough to justify that. Also are we needy enough? But on night three we checked into a room and I got to shower for the first time. On a chair was a bag waiting for Finn, filled with a stuffed rabbit and a homemade quilted blanket.
It took me days to feel safe enough to touch Finn. That blanket was hope embodied. To lay something soft over his tube laden body made him seem more human. I slipped the bunny under his arm, and felt like I could care for him in some small way again. When Finn woke up I asked him if he liked the bunny and he whispered in his broken voice I hate it so we chucked it across the room. (though it was later redeemed when we showed him how its ears could be a weapon used during stuffed animal battle) But then, I asked Finn about the blanket. It was the only moment in the hospital he said I love it to anything.
When our girls came to visit the RM House they were showered with treats and gifts. We sat with them in the communal dining room, laughing and crying. I cherish those sacred moments with our sweet girls.
Damon and I took shifts at RM House so when Finn was awake he was never alone. We returned to sleep, shower, or grab food. RM house provided a huge gift basket to Damon for Father's Day, pads for my period, and everything we needed to take care of laundry. I also did a lot of bitter crying there. There was so much to feel and not enough body to feel it. It was in the privacy of RM House that we prayed together and Damon gave me the blessing I desperately hopped would bring comfort. (It did, profoundly, though not immediately or in the way I had anticipated.)
AWAKE
The first day I knew Finn was going to survive was Sunday. (day 5)
Monday the 15th (6 days in PICU) we stopped sedation and prepared to extubate at 8pm. Damon held Finn's right hand and I his left. We kept him from grabbing tubes as he became increasingly aware and agitated. It took about an hour of watching him struggle before they thought he was coherent enough to pull the tube.
“Who’s this?” The nurse asked, pointing to me. Finn slowly turned his head, eyes heavy. His lips formed the word silently before he could muster the strength to whisper “mom.” I wept like rain over his body, sobs mingled with laughter. I've never known such dramatic joy to come from such a small sound. Next the nurse pointed to Damon and asked "whos that?" Finn struggled to see Damon and said "Dad".
The first hour awake Finn asked a lot of questions. His first three were:
When can we leave,
when are we done,
and
did Stella have to do this?
His damaged vocal cords could barely whisper so Damon and I took turns resting our ear next to his mouth then repeating him for the room. Finn asked about the various equipment he saw coming out of him. He told us I thought I was stuck in a swamp, I couldn't get the water out of my mouth. It was a painful glimpse into how scared he might have felt during intubation and sedation. He asked about "The Rings". It was easy to get out of the first ring, but the white ring was so hard. Why did you put that ring on me? How did they cut me out of it? There were no rings, but it was very real to Finn and weeks later he still laments how much he hated them
Something as simple as getting to stroke his hair again felt precious as caressing someone who is sedated can be distressing to them. Damon and I took turns laying next to him in the hospital bed answering questions and trying to normalize his experience. It was all very sweet, tender and tearful.
Until 2am.
Finn confided in me that the nurse was trying to hurt him and asked for help. When I made the mistake of trying to soothe him with reality his body collapsed in defeat. With a coldness I've never seen from him he said you are not real, and set his jaw, glaring.
Finn had delirium. During the six days of sedation his brain was unable to enter a restorative state of REM sleep, so from a mental standpoint it was as if he'd been awake for 6 days straight. He couldn't distinguish reality from dream. He was convinced we were trying to kill him. That Damon and I were 'copies' and not real. He saw giant spiders on the wall and thought the floor was covered in gaping holes.
To see him so scared and believing he was alone in the world was a different kind of heartbreak. The nurse and I spent a long while trying to soothe and stop him from pulling tubes. Finn became more hysterical. Out of ideas and distressed myself, I woke up Damon who slept just feet away.
Finn allowed Damon to crawl into the bed and watch a movie with him. I fell asleep around three. Damon fell asleep around four. We aren't sure when Finn fell asleep, but around six we found his feeding tube and IV disconnected, their contents pooling onto his hospital blanket. Finn had balled up as far away from Damon as he could and had fallen asleep.
Finn's sanity came back relatively quick though he still remembers those early days as a mixture dreams and reality. It took Finn several nights to feel safe to sleep again. He was terrified to get stuck in the "swamp" or the "rings".
PEDS
Finn was weak. He had the mobility of an infant. His hands couldn't grip or move towards the things he wanted. To walk for more than a few seconds (with assistance) was difficult. He was using a walker & wheelchair and worked with programs in PT, OT, child life specialists, and feeding to help him heal.
The day we left PICU for pediatrics was overwhelming for me. A breakdown day. The care was so much less, the room was depressing and cramped, and my body was struggling to process the enormity of what we'd been through.
To help Finn, Damon and I put on the worst sock puppet shows, which he inexplicably loved. We were happy to be idiotic in any measure to make him smile. We built Legos, read books, battled robots, had visitors...Finn LOVED it when people came and he tried his best to never let them leave.
At the end of every vital check, med dose, or blood draw the medical staff routinely asked "is there anything else I can get you?" before leaving the room. To which Finn would always answer "Spiderman medicine" We had many people from many departments on the hunt for a hidden vial. While the illusive medicine was never realized, we did receive a teddy bear dressed like Spiderman, and batman, and (randomly) a cop.
Early on, a child life specialist dug out some Spiderman masks and mandated that for Finn's enjoyment every medical person must wear them . At one point we had 5 Spidermen in our room, the juxtaposition of levity and whimsy tickled me.
PT taught Finn how to ask for syringes of water to shoot at unsuspecting nurses. He was so tickled when he was able to surprise PT by squirting him instead.
One night around 4am Finn wet the bed, a new struggle since being hospitalized. The CNA who came to help was frantic like a sim trying to stop a stove fire. He gathered, rushed and stumbled, ultimately handing me an infant sized gown with maternity mesh underwear for Finn.
Ya know, I don't think these are going to work...
he sighed deeply and said I was afraid you'd say that... Then looked to me to solve it.
Finn ate his first spaghetti-o's in the hospital; always with parmesan cheese, 4 slices of bacon and a side of pineapple. It became his sole nourishment after he his feeding tube came out, (He pulled it himself, this time with permission).
We did scavenger hunts around the pediatric floor to help Finn walk. Once, while wondered the halls, PICU nurses saw us on the cameras and rushed out to reconnect with Finn. There was an evening the PICU's charge nurse stood in the corner of our pediatric room just beaming and watching Finn. She had been there the night we brought him in. She told us she didn't think he would make it, and how good it felt to see him.
The amount of people who told us, once Finn was okay, that they thought he would die was surprising. We were told by Marc that Finn was at the precipice of death and his healing was not the outcome that was expected you definitely have someone looking out for us on the other side. We were told by Nephrology that if we had taken even minuets more to get him care, Finn would have undoubtable died. No one had expected him to survive and when he did, they were shocked to see how quickly he was recovering.
We spent 6 days on the Ped's floor, helping Finn grow stronger and dialing in his heart medication. It wasn't until the afternoon of June 22nd that we were discharged home. We took Finn to RM house so he could see where we'd been living. Also to give him a bath for the first time in weeks. He got to go into their secret toy room and have snacks in the kitchen. They gave us more toys for the kids and a large bag of food to help with the transition of having our first dinner at home.
HOME
Finn can not run, jump, hike, bike, swim, wrestle or really move much as his heart heals. We except the restrictions to be necessary for 3-6 months. The total time for his heart to heal will probably be close to a year. He will continue to follow up with cardiology and we expect him to make a recovery with no anticipated life long consequences. Some days he's easily tired and feels unwell, his muscles are not what they were, and he has yet to gain back the weight he lost while in hospital. Then there are days we have to remind him over and again to not wrestle.
We are not suspended between life or death anymore, but what has happened lays heavy on my heart and demands we carry it still. In some ways it has brought in increased beauty, in others, deeper darkness.
Finn was in hospital June 10th-June 22nd and his diagnoses were:
acute heart failure
acute pulmonary edema
shock
hypokalemia
acute respiratory failure
acute viral myocarditis
acute kidney failure
(as well as rotavirus A being found in his stool)
The best guess we have to explain the acute pain we'd assumed was appendicitis in the early days, is heart failure. When your heart can not give blood to all of your body, the first thing it cuts supply from are the intestines. This is hugely painful.
We have had to return to hospital twice since being discharged, each time has been incredibly difficult to watch Finn's distress. He has been strong in ways little boys should not have to be.
This is the story of what happened to Finn. We are forever changed and so cherish the simple fact that because he lived we get to keep unfolding what happens next; all the beautiful, awful, deep and silly things life has to offer him.
PHOTO DUMP
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We waited until he was awake and sane to bring the girls by. Though he was still not himself. Stella and Indie took turns sobbing in my embrace where Finn could not see.  My nest. I perched on this PICU chair from 6am -10pm.
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| Uno with Dad |
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| Scavenger Hunt |
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| Stressed the fuck out, but finding levity |
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| Sister's visit |
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| Self portrait in the paper towel dispenser |
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| He did NOT like that they only had cat & dog themed gowns, because that is for babies. Somehow there was one singular Star Wars gown and a nurse found it for him. Every other staff member thought we had bought it for him. |
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| Ped's room |
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| Skin irritation from being hooked to heart telemetry for so long. |
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| Discharged. |
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