Celebrating God’s mercy and grace

Celebrating God’s mercy and grace

I know I always keep saying this, but seriously the cases I see here never cease to amaze me. Three weeks ago the ER called stating they had a pregnant mother critically ill and would I come right away to the OR because they were transferring her there. The story goes like this. Two weeks earlier she had seen a “native doctor/traditional healer” who had cut out her uvula. The uvula is that small appendage that hangs down the back of one’s throat. He had also cut out her tonsils. She had so much edema from this horrific procedure that her airway was being cut off and she could not breathe. She had been hospitalized at another hospital for seven days and her condition continued to worsen. They had not even realized at the other hospital that she was full term pregnant! The family moved her to SCH as their last hope. When I entered the OR and saw that her O2 saturation was very low and she was gasping for every precious breath, I did not hold out much hope that she could survive. On the OR table it was obvious that she was near term with a gravid uterus. We initially could not get a fetal heart rate but then with ultrasound I could see that the baby was still alive with a fetal heart rate of 50. The normal is 120-160. We had to act quickly if, at least, we could save the baby. Amazingly, Shewalul, our head nurse anesthetist, was able to intubate her and we delivered a lifeless little boy. Dr. David and Dr. Becky immediately worked on him for 25 minutes before they got a regular heartbeat. Then it took another 20 minutes before the baby started taking shallow breaths on his own. But he was still not out of the woods. Shortly afterwards he started seizing. Eventually he was placed on three seizure meds to control the seizures. Back to his mother…she survived the surgery but was not able to breathe without the help of a tracheotomy that was performed by Dr. Teddy, one of our PAACS surgeons. She was placed on steroids and antibiotics and slowly began to improve. She was in our ICU for 10 days. Her swelling eventually reduced and the tracheotomy was replaced with a smaller one and then later removed. She is now totally breathing on her own. Amazingly, both she and her baby boy went home this past week. To look at them both, it was like looking at a miracle. The baby did not appear to have any residual effects of his anorexia. All of the seizures have stopped and he looks like a normal baby boy. This is a true testament to God’s mercy and grace. –An update from Dr. Mark and Allison Karnes, October 2015