Life as A Nurse~Part 9


The New Arrival


Every now and then you have to stop and ponder the miracle of life.

The ER is full of miracles, some are small and almost go unnoticed.

Some hit you across the face as if a pillow fight had just started.

As a team, we are often tuned into the problems of the patients and

have the tendency to ignore some of the joy that is right in front of us.

This is the story of a tiny little miracle named Autumn.


Case in Point:


I was working a night shift on a what seemed to be the longest night

of my life. The hospital was a small one, with only six exam rooms,

one doctor and one nurse for the night shift. It was bitter cold

outside and very few patients ventured out of their warm beds seek

treatment for their minor emergencies. Somewhere around 3:00 a.m.,

the silence of the night was broken by a loud scream coming from the

waiting room. A young lady had made her way into the ER with complaints

of abdominal pain.

She was a small girl, no more then 125 lbs. at the most. Her screams of

pain would come, and then just suddenly stop. This went on for sometime

while I set her up for an exam. I asked the same questions I usually do.

Are you pregnant? She was emphatic in her answer. There was no way she

was pregnant. Another pain hit her, and then the lightbulb above my head

went off. Perhaps, well, she doesn't look pregnant, but her pains were

sure coming on a regular basis.

I set her legs in the exam table and pulled up the sheet. For just a

moment, I stared in utter disbelief. Her next scream jolted me back into

the real world. I was looking directly at the buttocks of an infant

protruding from her vaginal area. The doctor wasn't present and all I

had with me to catch the little creature was a large emesis basin.

Her next scream brought forth a fully developed five and a half month

fetus. From what I could see, it was dead. The skin color was blue, it

wasn't breathing, and it was very small.

I yelled for Dr. Johnson for assistance. One thing they all knew about

me is that I never yell, so if I do, you better come running.

Dr. Johnson and I went about the business of cutting the cord and

delivering the placenta. All this with the mother still in denial about

ever being pregnant. Somewhere between calling the Chaplin and notifying

the coroner, I heard something that I will remember for the rest of my

life. Coming from the basin, I heard the unmistakable sound of a

whimpered cry. "Oh shit," I yelled to Dr. Johnson. She is alive!

Turning from the mother to the fetus, both of us peered down at the tiny

girl struggling to take her first breaths. Without a neonatal unit on

site, we had to make do with old fashion medicine and the equipment that

we had. We quickly warmed her with plastic bags of IV fluids wrapped in

blankets. Dr. Johnson threaded an IV through her tiny umbilical cord.

A tiny pink hat was placed on her head. We delivered much needed oxygen

with a blow-by system. This hospital was never equipped to handle an

infant so small.

A call was put out to the trauma unit and an airship was dispatched.

Much to our surprise, little Autumn's breathing and color both improved.

Her mother was finally accepting the fact that she was indeed a mother

now. It was explained to her that infants this small usually do not

fair well, she said she understood. We named her Autumn as it was the

season. Her mother agreed to this.

When the neonatal unit arrived, they were impressed by the way we had

handled the care of this small and helpless child, and a breach delivery

to top it off! They quickly loaded her into their specialized unit and

she was off in the black night to the major trauma hospital.

Several months later I received a card from the attending doctor at the

neonatal unit where little Autumn was treated. It seems that she was

going home and had suffered no long term ill effects from her traumatic

birth, butt first, into a barf basin.

I couldn't have been more pleased, and yes proud of the job we had

done that night. So often I wished her mother would bring her by the

hospital so we could see the bundle of joy we had saved, but that never

happened. It has been more than 20 years since Autumns birth,

Sometimes I wonder what kind of young lady she has become. Since she was

a miracle baby to start out with, I can only assume that her life is

filled with joy, happiness, and yes, miracles.



~Some Miracles do Come True~

Karen