Rejoicing for Life’s Littlest Champions
Life, like death, sometimes happens unexpectedly, like when deadly odds are stacked overwhelmingly against you from the very beginning, and your heart is the size of a dime.
Even before you take your first breath, even before you open your eyes, even before you know what fighting is. You must fight.
About 50 babies a month are admitted to the Davajan-Cabal Center for Perinatal Medicine, the neonatal intensive care unit at Good Samaritan Hospital near downtown Los Angeles. It is one of scores of such units in Southern California, each with its own stories of surviving against the odds, causes for celebration. At Good Samaritan, every two years the kids and their families get together and whoop it up. They have fought the good fight, and now they rejoice.
There are plenty of hot dogs and mixed fruit for the occasion, five sheet cakes, toys and a clown. Just one clown. The balloons are red, white and blue, and so are some of the children.
There are, perhaps a hundred of them, with painted faces and stories they are too young to tell, stories of life. Even as they celebrate, others like Kathy Jeon, born at 8:43 a.m. Sept. 11, struggle through their first days.
Ten days after the attack, Drs. Rangasamy Ramanathan and Bijan Siassi, co-directors of the center, welcome families to the event. It could have been rescheduled, but doctors and children are reminders of a fundamental truth.
“Life goes on,” Ramanathan says.
Sarah Pandy is 2. She was born 71/2 weeks early with a muscle too thick around her heart. “She didn’t cry when she was born,” says her mother, Tracie Pandy. “She didn’t make any sounds.”
There were times when Tracie and her husband, Lark Pandy, weren’t sure Sarah would survive. They were called to the hospital one day and told that her condition was worsening. Perhaps they should be at her side. When they arrived at the unit, Nurse Julie put her arm around Tracie’s shoulders and told her, “She’s not doing too good.”
But Sarah fought. The Pandys stayed by her that day, and, finally, exhausted, went home that evening. “I couldn’t take it anymore,” Lark says, “seeing her connected to all those machines.”
They knew there was a good chance the telephone would ring in the night and that it would bring bad news, but when they awakened, the sun was shining. Night had passed.
They called the unit. Sarah was improving. Two months and one day after she was born, they all went home together. She’s fine now. Potty training is a bit problematic but that’s nobody’s business.
Nurse Julie is Julie Gibler. She is kneeling on the floor visiting an old pal, Andrew Nissen, 3, who wins the award for having stayed in the unit longer than anyone else in attendance. He was there more than three months.
His mom, Anna Nissen, was in her 24th week of pregnancy when he was born. He weighed 1 pound, 12 ounces, and was 131/2 inches long. “He’s my miracle baby,” Anna says.
She has another son, Adam, 4, and is 22 weeks pregnant with a daughter. As she celebrates Andrew’s winnings--four passes to the Los Angeles Zoo--she also worries about her yet-to-be-born child.
It was about this point in her pregnancy that Andrew was born.
The featured event is a dance contest. Siassi, holding 1-year-old Dianne Pineda, seems like a strong contender, but there is formidable competition. In the end, they all win prizes.
Sitting in back is Erick Ortega Jr., 4, who was born with a hole in his heart. He weighed 2 pounds at birth and was in the hospital for nearly two months. His heart now is full.
Late to arrive are the Sorensens of Fullerton. Debbie and Eric have three children. Brandon, the youngest, is 2. He has a serious face. The Sorensens made arrangements to adopt him before his birth, but he arrived 13 weeks early while they were out of town visiting Eric’s parents. Brandon was alone in the intensive care unit, 3 days old, when they arrived. It was the fourth day before they could hold him.
While in the unit, Debbie would watch Ramanathan, the way he held babies so gently, as if they were bubbles, and encouraged them. “The only reason you can go home at night,” she says, “is because you know somebody loves them.”
Chong Seon and his wife, Jin Young Jeon, stop in briefly. Their daughter, Kathy, is still in the intensive care unit. She was born seven weeks early on Sept. 11. The country was in shock that day, and so were the Jeons.
Kathy had stopped growing in the womb, so doctors decided to induce labor. She weighed 2 pounds, 15 ounces at birth.
When the Jeons heard about what had happened in New York and at the Pentagon that day, it seemed, at first, a bad omen. But once Kathy’s condition stabilized, they decided that they did not want a day of terror forever marking her birthday.
So they will think of it as a day of life.