Kristie McNealy, MD

It’s easy to take health for granted until something goes wrong.  Today, all of my kids are healthy, and for that I am thankful.  I know what I have to be thankful for because we haven’t always been so lucky.

Four years ago this December, I was admitted to the hospital in preterm labor.  I was just 30 weeks pregnant.  Proactive doctors, complete bedrest and a series of medications managed to stop my labor, but I was kept in the hospital because our baby girls was breech and my cervix was dangerously short.  We settled in for a longterm hospitalization, but just 6 days after I was admitted, our daughter started showing signs of distress.  The very next day, she had to be delivered by urgent c-section, 9 weeks premature.

Our daughter weighed 3 pounds 15 ounces and was just over 16 inches long when she was born.  She was immediately admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit.  She spent a week on a ventilator, and suffered from pneumonia.  She was jaundiced and spent days under bili lights.  She literally had one foot out the NICU door when she caught rota virus, and the infection caused her to developed a very dangerous yet common complication of prematurity – necrotizing enterocolitis.  Just one month later, the new rota virus vaccine would be recommended for all infants.

While she was sick, she was stuck in isolation to protect the other babies in the unit.  For two weeks she felt nothing but latex gloves and paper gowns.  Our skin couldn’t touch hers.  She couldn’t eat.  During that time, her white blood cell count soared so alarmingly high that we thought she was septic.  Her grave medical condition combined with a hole in her heart called a patent foramen ovale caused her develop a heart murmur.  Her heart looked enlarged, and we were told she was probably in heart failure.

During her NICU stay she had an echocardiogram, a head ultrasound, a lower GI series and countless chest and abdominal x-rays.  She had to have an incision made in her arm so a catheter could be threaded into her vein because there wasn’t any place left to insert an IV.

After 46 long and emotional days, we were finally able to bring her home and introduce her to her big sister.  She weighed in at a whopping 5 pounds 9 ounces.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to leave her prematurity at the door when we walked out of the NICU.  Her fragile lungs left her vulnerable, and she was redamitted to the hospital later the same month with a severe respiratory infection.  She was diagnosed with influenza A, yet another vaccine preventable illness, but this time she was too young to get the vaccine. Because of the damage this infection inflicted on her already damaged lungs, our daughter spent much of the next 15 months of her life on oxygen, and dependent on multiple daily medications.

Somehow, despite everything, that tiny baby has grown into a nearly invincible preschooler, and I’ve started to get over her rocky beginnings.

Over the past year, she’s figured out that the baby in the pictures with all of those tubes is really her.  She talks about it a lot.  On the bright side, that means that she’s finally talking (and counting, and singing, and generally making a lot of noise that never seems to end).  She loves to learn, and run, and play – all things we weren’t so sure she would ever get a chance to do the morning the NICU called out of the blue to say she was suddenly unresponsive and very, very sick.

Sometimes she drives us a little crazy, but we are oh so thankful that today, we can say she’s a healthy kid.

Share why you’re thankful for a healthy kid in your life this holiday season by participating in the Healthy Kid Thank-A-Thon.  Check out the Colorado Children’s Immunization Coalition webpage for more details!

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