by

Linda Rivers

     She entered this world three weeks early. Her tiny hands and baby feet waived vigorously through the air. Suddenly, I saw her new-born face turn a deep red, then a bluish-purple meshing into a deep blue/almost black color. She was fighting in despair for the teensy little breaths that could keep her alive. All 5 pounds and 7 ounces of her small body gasped for life. The nurses ran in and pulled her from the incubator and went into another room. At that moment I thought our little granddaughter was gone.

     "My God, what is happening?" I cried to my husband.

     He held me in his arms stroking my hair. "You stay with Tammy," he spoke in a soft calm voice, "I'll go talk to the doctor." I went into our daughters' room. Due to the sedation that was used during her c-section delivery, she lay quietly sleeping, totally oblivious to what was happening around her.

     My husband slowly walked in the doorway and motioned for me to come out into the hallway. Quietly and as gently as he could, he began describing to me the seriousness of our granddaughters' plight. She was born with a rare Type B Esophageal Atresia with Tracheoesophageal Fistula, where the upper segment of the esophagus forms a fistula to the trachea and the lower segment of the esophagus ends in a blind pouch. Type B is a very rare form. He explained that she would have to be airlifted to Shands Medical Center in Gainesville, Florida, for immediate repair or she will never live to see tomorrow.

     The following morning our granddaughter, Kira Corene, endured a six-hour operation to repair her trachea and esophagus. For the next four weeks she would be in the Neonatal Critical Care Unit at Shands as her infinitesimal body healed. She was not allowed to swallow for one month, therefore; and was attached to many machines. The nutrients that fueled her body were being administered intravenously. The surgery site was on her upper back. She lay there helpless, clinging to life day by day.

     After four weeks of intravenous feeding, our daughter, (who had now moved in across the street at Ronald McDonald House) was permitted to feed Kira with a bottle. The doctor told her that when Kira could keep down four ounces of formula - she could go home. Tammy fed her little by little. As the days went by, Kira began to gulp down more and more formula. Within three days she was up to four ounces. On day four - Kira and Tammy were released from the hospital. We brought both Tammy and Kira home to our house - where we had set up a nursery. Every day Kira seemed to get stronger and stronger. Her will to live was extraordinary and brightened our every day.

     Kira had been home for approximately three weeks, when Tammy walked in to my bedroom holding a limp little baby in her arms. "Mom," she cried, "there is something wrong with Kira. She spits up everything she eats and she won't hold her head up."

     I looked into Kiras' lifeless eyes and ran to the phone to call the hospital. They said to bring her in immediately. Kira's fistula had grown back and the blockage once again constricted her throat. She could not swallow. She was not getting any nourishment. She was dying.

     Another surgery, another recovery, then back home.

     Two weeks later the same routine. Another blockage, another surgery, another recovery, then back home.

     This went on until Kira was six months old. We were told that because she is a special-needs baby, her development would probably be somewhat impaired. Yet, when one-year old Kira went in for her annual check-up the doctor gave us what we thought was relatively good news.  He said that although she was doing better, she was a little under-weight. 

     We started monitoring her activities daily, then weekly and finally monthly. It seemed to us that she was doing what the other children her age were doing. We marveled at her comprehension level. She always seemed to know what we were talking about and even tried to interact with our conversations. By eighteen months she already had a vocabulary of 80 words. She was walking and running everywhere. I noticed that she could sing complete nursery rhymes. We put her in nursery school at our church and her intellect seemed to explode. She wanted to know what everything was, and then would ask us to ask her, what everything was. She was amazing.

     After the terrorist attack on September 11th, we found Kira watching ground zero on TV when they put the American Flag up. She put her tiny little hand over her heart and recited, word for word, the entire Pledge of Allegiance. Everyone in the room just froze in place. She turned around and saw everyone staring at her. "That is so sad, Mommy," she said. We just could not believe our ears or eyes. Kira is now one month shy of being three-years-old and loves the American Flag. It is displayed everywhere -- on houses, in buildings, on cars and trucks. Every time she sees a flag -- there goes her tiny hand right over her heart as she recites the Pledge of Allegiance. I think we have heard it a hundred times or more since last September. AND now she wants her bedroom decorated in the American Flag -- bedspread, curtains and wallpaper. All of her clothes have to have an American flag or Stars and Stripes. At her two-year check-up the physicians were astonished. Kira did not appear to be developmentally delayed. In fact they said she was advanced for a two-year-old. Her vocabulary stunned the doctors as she recited the Pledge of Allegiance. They told us she is no longer a special-needs baby.

     In fact, I am now the one ill. I was diagnosed last August with Systemic Lupus and Fibromyalgia. Kira now worries about her Nana's fatigue. She walks up to me everyday and says, "You're not sick today, Nana?" and whether my answer is yes or no, she always says, "Then I can hold you?" I picked her up in my arms. She hugged me really tight and began softly rubbing my forehead. "It's OK Nana. I will take care of you!" She asked me to sit down so she could start checking me out "like the doctors do." Her movements automatically come forward, like "recall" from long ago when she was in the hospital. She puts her ear to my chest and listens to my heart. Then she moves her wee little hand from my forehead to my hair. As she starts stroking my hair, she whispers very softly, "It's OK, Honey, it's gonna be OK." And you know what? With a little hero like her, right by my side, it always will be.  

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