It's Done....

About two weeks ago, I got "the call".

After subjecting myself to placing numerous phone calls, waiting for said phone calls to be returned, hours of Internet research, making visits to the hospital & city hall, and a little over 1 1/2 years of waiting....it has been fixed. My baby boy is now legally dead.

The funeral home called me today to let me know that Ethan's death certificate is available for pick up.

I feel better and worse at the same time. Does that make sense? I'm glad that my persistence paid off, but I hate that I have to re-live his death, again. I really don't want to see the damn thing, but I know I have to. It took so long for them to fix the error. As a matter of fact, they weren't even sure if it could be done. Death certificates hardly ever have to be fixed so not too many people make the request I made. Nevertheless, it had to be done.

You see....his name was wrong.

The hospital alerted me that this might happen. After all, he was admitted and died under the name the hospital gave him. They had to give him my last name in order to associate him with my health insurance. (I work for the hospital and trust me when I say that this is standard practice for all newborns.) The fact that his temporary name became permanent was the bureaucratic price we (his parents) had to "pay" for not being married. As a matter of fact, his medical records are still listed under this name. (Gotta love that "red tape", folks!) So in case you didn't know, he was referred to "Ethan Intal" during the final days of his life. When I got his first certificate, I was at the very least expecting to see his birth name as an alias, but that section was blank. So legally, my sweet baby was still alive.

Ethan Intal was the one that died, not my son.

I distinctly remember the day his first certificate came in the mail. I wanted to rip the damn thing up, but that wasn't going to do a fucking thing to change that my baby was gone. Instead, I neatly tucked his incorrect death certificate away. I wasn't in the right state of mind so naturally, I bawled like an idiot. I did the same thing when his social security card came in the mail two days after he was buried. Once all of the ugly sobs stopped tearing through my body, I vowed to fix his certificate.

So now, after a very long wait, it's done.

I'm going to the funeral home to pick it up tomorrow. And tomorrow, I get to see his diagnosis and cause of death...again. The same diagnosis that Niki lives with today.

I hope to never see "FVII Deficiency" written on another death certificate again.