A Chance Meeting with Life

Inside an Intensive Care Unit, and Out

This is the story of Jacqueline Price who was born with cystic fibrosis and made it out of childhood with many memorable slumber parties, snow days, beach trips, and hospitalizations.  She loved attending Robinson High School and Radford University, majoring in Finance.  Living in Raleigh, North Carolina and then moving back home to Northern Virginia went smoothly enough.  Working at a German grocery giant, Lid, and living among friends by the Mosaic District, a fun mixed-use community along the D.C. Metro subway system was quite nice.

Then something terrible happened due to the cystic fibrosis. As it happens, her childhood hospital not far away, Fairfax Hospital, and specifically their Heart and Vascular Institute and more specifically the doctors and nurses within the CardioVascular Intensive Care Unit, saved Jacqueline’s life.  This is the story of how, with many stories within this story.

I, her mother, Jan Price, remained there from morning to night every day for weeks and weeks and focused solely on the survival of our daughter, except I was able to write.  Every day, I wrote about what I witnessed. I wrote about our daughter’s medical tidal wave and recovery, and about what was going on in my own head. It was tough but tough was doable and so we did.  And they did.

This is the story of doctors and nurses and teams of teams, of specialists, remarkable people with the medical skills to do remarkable things.  Imagine no more. Everyone should read this story because it is a story about a part of life few witness.

As you read this story, stay with me. At this point in my life, I am first a mom. You may think I love our daughter the most because this story is about her, but I have a good husband and we also have a son we love as immeasurably. Moms with more spectacular lives still say that loving their children is most important.

Down on the list yet close to the top, I love writing. I am a writer only in that I have a story to tell. By profession, I taught young children to read and taught older children who were in trouble, from elementary school to alternative high school. By profession and in my personal life, I have been a problem solver. I have not been a writer by profession. My personal life has made me a writer. 

Forgive my fragmented sentences, terms not well explained, the parts that may fumble along, as I fumbled along in the complex matrix. You will get to know me as a wife and a mother, as an observer, as a person who watches and thinks and makes sense of this world. You will get to know my version of the capabilities of an incredible and complex medical community.

I am not a medical expert nor intend to convey that I am. My interpretations come from living with and helping, at a deep level, people with serious medical conditions. I am a wife and mother who has learned a lot over many years. Please do go to the proper sources, as we have, for proper medical advice. I do advise selecting medical experts judiciously and then following their direction vigilantly. Allow them, unencumbered, to apply their long-acquired, complex skillsets. Listen more than speak. And appreciate.

I did not write this story to help people. That is a daunting responsibility I cannot assume. My intention in writing Jackie’s story is to capture it in words, for the reader to get to know our family, the life of our daughter, and to understand what I went through and she went through at the hands of our medical community. I answer the question, “What happened to Jackie?” and give Jackie a chance to witness through words my raw interpretation of being her mother.