Amazon
solaolu
Category:
Memoir
Publisher: Create Space
ISBN-10: 1460932676
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 192
ISBN-13: 9781460932674
The Summer Called Angel is a poignant recollection of a mother’s journey through preeclampsia and prematurity. It explores the life of new parents through trying times of anxiety, hope, helplessness, resolve and triumph.
“My journey to motherhood began with a siren flashing, horn-blaring ride to the emergency room of a hospital. Within a day, everything I had imagined for the birth of my child changed.”
In June of 2004, graduate student Sola Olu was expecting. She was primed to receive a hard-won graduate degree from DePaul University. And, she was entering the third trimester of pregnancy with her first child. Amid the shimmering expectancy, one unexpected event turned her summer into a daze of apprehension and emotional agony. Through The Summer Called Angel, Olu’s deeply affecting memoir, the author shares her personal journey through the harrowing months following the premature births of both children.
When Sola went for an essentially routine visit to her doctor twenty-eight weeks into her pregnancy, she felt, at worst, a little tired. Instead, she was soon to deliver her daughter Angel at a perilously premature time. From the birth, Sola and her husband Chris were thrust into an unimaginable odyssey spanning seven months, several surgeries, and a painful imposed separation with their physically compromised newborn fighting daily to gain critical strength.
Punctuated by the actual medical reports during Angel’s protracted development, The Summer Called Angel provides intimate, hands-on details of the complexity of preeclampsia and prematurity as well as the emotional toll taken on parents who must witness their tiny baby struggle for life. With equal parts remorse and resolve, Sola and Chris struggle along, with the sole, all-consuming focus on their daughter’s survival. Throughout, Sola’s ever-growing knowledge of every new medical challenge underscores a love that knows no bounds of knowledge or time.
The Summer Called Angel also touches on Sola’s second premature birth and the emotional toll that ensues. Through everything the family is able to triumph and share their experiences to bring hope to others.
With candor and incandescence, The Summer Called Angel serves as a powerful tribute to maternal love in the face of unexpected challenges. It is certain to offer strength to readers attempting to process prematurity in their lives—and salve to those who have undergone a similar experience. All in all, rare and profound celebration of devotion is certain to resonate with parents everywhere.
Excerpt
She wants to live, I remember thinking. She wants to be here. This is a human being. This is my child and I am going to fight for her.
Then Chris joined me from work. I clutched our list of questions as if my own life depended on it, and together we entered the meeting room. It was a big room with a long, rectangular table. Marcy was there, as well as the surgeon, the head neonatologist in charge of Angel’s care, and our counselor. She had been in charge of putting everything together.
“How far are we with Angel?” my husband started. “We wanted this meeting today because we need to know what’s going on. We want to know what the plan is for her treatment.”
The surgeon spoke first. “Four or five days ago, I’d have had nothing but bad news for you. But yesterday, for the first time in weeks, I wrote my first good report about Angel. I’ve seen some positive changes. She opened her eyes, her oxygen needs started declining on its own, and finally she’s developed a fistula, one of the complications of NEC. A fistula is an abnormal connection between the intestine and the skin. We usually don’t like them to develop, but this one offers a ray of light. The nurse who noticed it felt that some bile was coming from that opening. This might mean something is passing through, and poop might eventually come out of there. It isn’t what we hoped for, but it’s something that might work. At this point we’ll take anything.”
My husband and I looked at each other. “So we’re not going to take her off the ventilator or anything like that?”
“Oh no, no, no.”
“What happens after this, though?” Chris pressed.
“We’ll do a GI test to check how much intestine she has up to the fistula. If the tests show she has enough to eat and digest food, and the intestinal function’s good, we’ll feed her. For now we’ll let the poop come out of the fistula.”
“I mean, we want her here desperately.” Chris’s voice sounded unusually anxious, and I looked over, surprised. “But if things really look bad, when do we reach the point when we decide it’s not worth it, for Angel’s sake?”
Chris and I had talked at length about this. We didn’t want Angel to suffer for months only to be told there was nothing else they could do and she would die anyway. We were ready to face the fact that she simply might not make it. Still, when people told me, “It’s okay, there’ll be other babies,” I wanted to say, Yes, but they won’t be Angel.
The doctor shook his head firmly. “We never give up hope. Having said that, we do sometimes tell families their best option is to take their child off support when the quality of life is severely affected. But Angel is not one of those cases.”
The head pediatrician interrupted, “Angel has had several brain scans and they all came back negative for brain bleeds. The last one came today, another normal result. That’s significant. Though she’s had a rough time, her heart or brain haven’t been injured. Breathing issues she will eventually overcome, as she grows older her lungs will grow new tissue. And she’s feisty, she just fights and fights. Except for these past few weeks, Angel has always wiggled and grabbed at things when she’s being changed or when her ventilator is being suctioned. The biggest challenge is her tummy, but I think we’re seeing some progress now. Unfortunately, we can’t predict her outcome or what lies in the future for her developmentally. But for now, there’s hope for Angel.”
“There’s hope for Angel,” I repeated. “There’s hope for Angel,” the surgeon reaffirmed.
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