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Description
Enter the Deuce is a podcast about the birth of writer Patrick Brady’s son, Matthew. He was born with a condition that should have killed him less than five minutes after birth. This is the story of his survival and recovery and the roller coaster ride of near-misses his parents white-knuckled through. The episodes are pieces Patrick originally published at the site Red Kite Prayer. This is life itself: parental love, fear for our children, not to mention addressing our mortality and the question of our purpose in life.
16 Episodes
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With a full year of life under Matthew’s belt, I take stock of how far he has come as well as some lingering after effects of his time in the NICU.
In this episode we take the Deuce home and begin actually living with our son. Not lost on us is the fact that he was released on Easter Sunday. Certainly we felt like he’d risen from the dead.
You’d think that having your child’s doctor tell you he’s ready to go home would be cause for exhilaration and joy. Honestly, my sense of him was that he was still so fragile I didn’t feel entirely ready to leave the safety of the NICU. It was a reaction I never thought I’d have.
With the Deuce safely back from surgery, you’d think we would breathe a sigh of relief. I was surprised to find that the accumulated stress weighed on me more than prior to the surgery. But even as I was falling apart, the Deuce was showing signs of improvement.
The day came for The Deuce’s surgery. The stress of accompanying his transporter to the OR was unlike anything I’ve experienced. I went back to his pod and we waited. More time passed in those two hours than I thought possible.
Conceding that your child’s options have dwindled to only one course of action is a difficult concept to digest. As a younger man I might not have accepted the news and just put my fingers in my ears. Talking to a surgeon and agreeing to allow him to cut your child open is not your […]
The diplomacy of a NICU physician could teach the UN a thing or two discussing difficult subjects. Our doctor didn’t spring the question of surgery on us, but began mentioning that we *might* have to discuss it. A day or two later he suggested we might want to consult with the surgeon. I began to […]
Science rests on a foundation of data. You can’t do anything as an engineer, chemist or doctor without having data. Sometimes you have data, but that data is bad, that is, inaccurate. After more than three weeks in the NICU we thought the Deuce’s condition was improving for the simple reason that there wasn’t much […]
I was a bike racer for many years; it’s a sport that demands strength, aerobic fitness, the calm of a Zen master and lightning-fast reflexes. Racing is chaotic, chaotic in a way that can make everyday life seem pretty mundane. It has, however, illustrated a great many lessons about coexisting with others and taking care […]
In our sixth episode Matthew experiences his first significant setback and our sense of his progress and his prognosis receive a recalibration. The parents of another baby suffering the same sort of effusion show up at the NICU and their experience is quite different from ours.
Visiting the Deuce in the hospital was a kind of purgatory. I was able to be near my son, but I couldn’t hold him and touching him through the isolette was a limited activity. I learned how there is a hierarchy in the NICU according to the severity of a child’s condition, and just where […]
This week’s show looks at why when friends offered to help, I simply froze. As a kid, I tended to not ask for help until it was too late, if I asked at all. My gut tells me that when you are a functioning adult, accepting charity is like 40 lashes to the ego. I […]
In this episode the doctors tell us just what they think is wrong with Matthew. They also give us some sense of how things might go and because they want us hopeful, they aren’t willing to discuss what happens if they decide surgery is necessary. And I admit my frustration that no one at Kaiser […]
If you’re a parent, you have some idea of how the birth of a child is supposed to go. After the most intense experience of the mother’s life (and sometimes the dad’s, too), a baby pops out, the nurses clean it up and then mom gets to hold her baby, skin-to-skin. In our case, when […]
Back in 2013 when my youngest son was born he almost died less than three minutes after his birth. He had a condition that would have been terminal when I was born. He was moved to a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) where he proceeded to spend the following 39 days. Enter the Deuce is […]
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