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A delightful look of surprise flushes Jimmy's face as his toes touch the dewy
blades of grass for the first time. He rhythmically flaps his arms to the sides
before I gently bring them together and stroke his palms with the velvet
flower petals. Before wheeling him back upstairs, I gather one fresh leaf and
one crackling dry one from the giant magnolia. I want him to feel as many
textures as I can gather during our brief time outdoors.
A few months later, Jimmy dies on the very same day my son, Max, enters
kindergarten. Jimmy was seven months old. Max is now six years old. A
lifetime apart, they lived for months in the same corner spot in the intensive
care nursery.
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Divine Secrets of the Yo-Yo Sisterhood | Feature | East Bay Express 12/28/09 3:56 PM
In tandem, we glance at the clock to confirm that our required scrub time is
up. We pitch our sponge brushes into a common trash can that divides the
two banks of double sinks, dry our arms with paper towels, and grab yellow
protective gowns from a metal baker's rack in the corner. I follow Lynnette
into Room C, the largest of the nursery's five rooms, where she heads for her
babies lying in separate isolettes. She lifts Diego out of his plastic cocoon and
invites me to sit next to her and rock her three-pound infant. She then places
Miles on her lap. We sit knee to knee so that both boys can hear her identify
herself as "mommy" in a melodic voice that premature babies automatically
invite.
To appreciate these neonatal intensive care nurses, one must see their world.
The babies who are transported here are among the most critically ill in
Northern California. Children's Hospital Oakland boasts an impressive
number of pediatric subspecialists. Babies with life-threatening conditions,
or those requiring surgery, are brought in from a wide network of birth
hospitals. Once there, every subspecialist required is called in -- I witnessed
this with my own son -- and every resource is applied to save the patient's
life, regardless of ability to pay. Information released by the hospital shows
that in 2001, more than half of the patients at Children's were covered by
Medi-Cal.
In 1995, the year my son was a patient, 571 babies were admitted to the
intensive care nursery. Annual admissions peaked at approximately 600 in
1997 and 1998, then dropped last year to 437 due to local hospital mergers
that increased intensive-care options elsewhere. Despite the flux, the
mortality rate has remained steady for the past two decades at between eight
and ten percent a year. Linda LeFrak, a clinical nurse specialist who has
worked in Children's nursery for 27 years, explains, "The babies that die are
either the extremely immature, like the 24- or 25-weeker, or the child with
congenital anomalies that are not compatible with life. And there hasn't been
a technological advance to save those babies. We don't lose babies in certain
categories anymore."
Children's intensive care nursery is rated Level 3, which means, among other
criteria, that it provides life support through mechanical ventilation.
Unofficially, some call it a Level 4 unit because it is one of only a hundred in
the country that provides the pinnacle in lifesaving technology known as
extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation. That treatment provides days-long
heart-lung bypass for babies suffering from a number of conditions where
the vessels constrict, denying adequate blood supply to the lungs and
therefore insufficient oxygen to the body.
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