Seven

My boy would be seven. S-e-v-e-n. A lanky, second-grader comfortable after two years at elementary school and able to provide support to his little sister just venturing into kindergarten.

Like all of these birthdays, seven seems to hold its own significance. Maybe not in the most direct of ways, like the firstbirthday or even the fifth birthday. But it's made me think about an event I attended at a local Native American community center many years ago (well before I ever had kids which feels like an eternity ago). The speaker presented on the significance of the number seven.

She explained that human embryos begin to develop genitalia at 7 weeks gestation. This is the first outward evidence of gender; differentiation and a step in identity.

At age 7 years, most children are shedding their baby teeth and assuming their adult teeth; another major transformation.

Seven years after that, at 14, another major life milestone - puberty. When adolescents' bodies mature and are now capable of reproduction.

Unfortunately, I cannot recall what she said about age 21, the last in her series of 7-year divisions. But I think it was something along the lines of becoming a full-fledged adult who contributes to the community.

Seven years, is also the state-mandated medical record retention policy in our state. When A died, we took advantage of all available opportunities to try and determine why our healthy full-term baby died suddenly. We signed off on lab tests and agreed to an autopsy and genetic testing. After we had all of those reports in hand, we visited two different perinatal specialists in our area to see if they could glean a cause of death. They each came to different hypotheses; one said it may have been some sort of pressure on the cord. The other said, it could have been an infection. We will never know for sure. One of them did note, that A’s heart was enlarged (per the autopsy report it weighed 17.3 grams, well above the high end of average at 14 grams)

In the months after A was born, I requested my prenatal and labor and delivery records along with all of his hospital records. Fresh in mourning and with an aching heart, I read through the autopsy report. It ripped me apart to read how much each of his organs weighed, trying to avoid thinking about some stranger in a lab coat dissecting my boy, cutting open his body and snipping loose each organ. But we wanted answers, for our sake, for A’s sake and for the prospect of future children.

My recollection was that while reading through the autopsy report, there was a single instance where his heart was reported to have been of normal size. That there was one digit off, a typo. This morning, I scoured the house looking for A’s medical records. I needed to find that autopsy report and call the hospital to have it corrected. This week is seven years since treatment, which means they’ll destroy his medical records this week. I need the record to be accurate.

The records weren’t in his box – the one with all his memorabilia. They weren’t in my filing box. They weren’t in his binder that holds his photos. WHERE ARE THEY?! I began sobbing, hyperventilating, spinning into a panic. I had to find them. The hospital will destroy them any day now. This is my last chance to set the record straight.

Finally, in the farthest corner, in a bin I didn’t even remember we had, I found the records. I sat down and went through them again, agonizing over words like “the usual Y shaped incision was made.” I read through the entire autopsy report and didn’t find the discrepant heart size. I re-read the autopsy report. I again, only found the 17.3 gram reference. I picked up the thicker stack of records; my medical records and went through them page-by-page. No discrepancy. Had I misread it all those years ago? Am I misremembering now?

I went through A’s and my records several more times searching for a different measurement of his heart. Nothing.

I have resigned myself that I will not be reaching out to the hospital to right an incorrect report. But I don’t know if I’ll ever shake this nagging feeling that it was an error.

And what does it matter? So what if his heart was enlarged? His brain was also much above the high end of average weight. (Oh the thought of his skull being opened and someone removing his brain with two hands and placing it on a scale!!!!). It may not be an important clue in this medical mystery of why he died. Maybe more than anything, it’s just a manifestation of my need to parent my dead child and there being so few opportunities to do so.