3 Months. And, no answers.

Today marks three months.

Three months ago, we woke to discover Matteo Tate dead in his crib. He was just short of 18 months old. He was fighting a fever for the approximate 30 hours before his death.

I hoped with all my heart that we would have had an answer by now as to why Matt died. But, we don't. And, that I can assure you is a very, very difficult thing to swallow and understand. As his mother, it is gut-wrenching. It makes me physically ill at times. It makes me cry. It makes me angry. It makes me feel completely vulnerable to accidents of any sort, and death.

The really sucky part is that the coroner/Dr. J is about to close the case on Matteo's case. I’ve spoken with her twice in the past two weeks.

She went as far as sending Matt's organ/tissue samples to Stanford for review by a world-renowned pathologist. He agreed with her, in that every one of Matt’s organs (heart, lungs, brain, spleen, liver, kidney, etc.) looked very healthy. Matteo had slightly enlarged tonsils, indicative that he was fighting a virus of some sort. But, other than that, Matteo was a healthy little boy.

Ok... again... I don't understand. WHAT? Then, why on EARTH is our child dead? Someone explain this to me. Please. PLEASE?!

Three months of missing our little buddy. Three. Months. If you have asked me three months ago if I could go on living like this, I would have seriously doubted it. But, I have. We all have. And, we continue living. Every day. It's harder than hell... but we do it. For our two other children. For Baby Surprisette. For Matt. Without Matt. And, it sucks.

There are hundreds of known viruses. But, as we've learned in recent months... hospitals can only test for a handful of those viruses on living tissue and blood samples.

Apparently, the challenge can be far greater when it comes to running the same tests on post-mortem tissue. Some of the viruses/bacteria are nearly impossible to grow.

Of the tests the coroner was able to complete on Matteo, these are the results that have been shared with us:
• Pneumonia - negative
• Meningitis - negative
• Meningococal - negative
• H1N1 (Swine Flu) - negative
• Influenza - negative
• Dehydration – negative
• Myocarditis – no signs
• Anomalous left coronary artery – no signs
• Brain aneurism – no signs
• Febrile Seizure – no signs
• SIDS – completely ruled out, due to the fact Matt was over 1 year of age
• Toxicology report showed one item: Acetaminophen (Tylenol), of normal levels

Per our pediatrician’s suggestion after Rocco’s 5 day fever, we went ahead and had his blood drawn to test for mono/EBV. We’re still awaiting results. The first result was inconclusive, partly due to a lab error.

Then, I need to let the Dr. J know what the results are. If negative, she closes Matteo’s case. If positive, there may be another test the coroner’s lab does. There may not be.

Dr. J could not perform the EBV/mono test on Matteo due to the fact that the bacteria is next to impossible to grow from post-mortem tissue.

I also asked Dr. J again if she could guesstimate Matteo's time of death. It's difficult to do with absolute certainty, due to the fact that he was dead for hours before we discovered him. But, she estimates it was closer to the 10pm-12am hours on July 4th, versus the very early hours of July 5th.

It is beyond difficult to think that my sweet baby boy, died from a random virus that we can’t pinpoint. In today’s world of vaccines and hand washing… my child died from being sick. He had a fever. And, we had no way of knowing that this fever was different from any other he had experienced over his lifetime.

That’s hard to swallow.

It’s still hard to think I will never see him again. Never hold him again. Never smell him and snuggle with him again. Never see him playing with Rocco and Gabby again.

It beyond hurts.

People ask if it’s getting easier with time. People ask if it helps knowing another baby is on the way. And, I sometimes want to scream “NO!” at the top of my lungs and cry at what seems like such an insensitive comment/question. But, I don’t. I don’t because I know they have no way of understanding what we’ve gone through, or how we feel. There is no way they could truly know our loss. No possible way.

You can try to imagine what it’s like. Maybe you have a child around 18 months… or older, or younger. And, maybe you try to “imagine” not seeing them, holding them or hearing their precious little voice for 3 months. But in reality… you still get to do that every day. We don’t. We won’t again. Ever. Not with Matteo. He’s gone. Nobody and nothing can or will ever replace him. He’s our loss. Our big, huge, gigantic loss. We will never see his full potential… the great man he was supposed to grow up to be. We will never be witness to more of the crazy and fun twin antics between Matt and Rocco. We'll always look at Rocco and think and wonder what Matteo would have done, been, looked like.

You will never know quite how we feel unless you’ve experienced a loss like this.