• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

'Best Baby' Knows That Mommy Had Tough Time

Posted on: Friday, 14 October 2005, 06:00 CDT

By David Wecker

The way Jana Handy understands it, the prayer chains stretched all the way to Rome for her and her baby. Complete strangers came to the hospital to pray over both of them.

Jana heard about it later. The whole time, she was in a coma. She missed the delivery altogether. When she awoke on Aug. 11, the 42nd day, she had no memory of ever being pregnant.

This part of her story began late last year, when Jana met Robert McQueen. They were both working the first shift as material handlers at Emerson Power Transmission in Florence. They fell in love and, on Valentine's Day, Jana learned she was going to have a baby.

They were both excited. After breaking the news to their parents, they began planning a wedding, making a room for the baby in their duplex in Erlanger. Early on, Jana developed a wrenching nausea, much worse than she imagined a normal morning sickness could ever be. It grew increasingly worse.

By mid-March, her doctor put her on short-term disability. Three times, she was hospitalized for dehydration. The third time, a feeding tube was installed. Jana learned how to do the hook-up. Once a week, a nurse would come by to change the dressing.

On a Fourth of July trip to visit Rob's family at Cave Run Lake, Jana began having sharp abdominal pain. She calls it "a scary kind of pain." On the evening of July 5, after attaching her feeding tube, her temperature soared to 104.6. In the early hours of the next morning, Rob drove her to Christ Hospital.

"The last thing I knew, I was going in for a CT scan," Jana says.

Rob was told to go home and get some sleep. He was awakened after about an hour with a call telling him that his fiancee was slipping and he needed to get back to the hospital pronto. When he arrived, a dozen doctors were engaged in trying to keep Jana alive. She was unconscious, on a ventilator, but still struggling against them, thrashing and pulling at tubes. A nurse explained to Rob that they had no choice but to put her into a drug-induced coma.

The diagnosis was that Jana's feeding tube had become infected, causing her to go into septic shock and acute respiratory distress. Rob was told that the doctors start to worry when a patient's white blood cell count reaches 10,000; Jana's was at 45,000. The picture that was painted led Rob to believe he was going to lose both Jana and their baby.

On July 20, still in a coma, Jana began having contractions. She was transferred to University Hospital. Twelve days later, on Aug. 1, her obstetrician performed a caesarian section to take the baby in order to save Jana's life.

It was a girl. Rob and Jana had picked out a name months earlier -- Mesa, Hebrew for "miracle of God." She weighed 3 pounds, 2 ounces. Her original due date was Oct. 16. Because Jana had been prescribed a morphine-based pain killer during her pregnancy, Mesa had to be weaned off the drug.

Rob's fear, one he expressed to his mother several times, was that he would be bringing up Mesa on his own.

Then on Aug. 11, Jana came out of the coma.

"I did know I had a daughter -- I didn't even remember being pregnant," she says.

"All I knew was that I was tied to a bed. My throat was so sore, I couldn't talk. I looked down at my legs and started crying, they were so skinny. I looked like a person who had just been liberated from a concentration camp."

Four days later, she was able to walk again on her own, without holding onto something.

One day last week, Jana was sitting on her front step, cradling her daughter on her thighs. Mesa has a dimple on her chin, like her father, and she has gained three pounds.

"She's the best baby. She never fusses, doesn't cry. Or if she does, it's only for a few seconds. She knows Mommy had it rough."

The first thing, she says, is to find a church. She and Mesa's father think it will be important for their baby to grow up knowing that Sundays are for church.

"Without all those prayers from all those people I don't even know, I wouldn't be here now," Jana says.

"I'll never doubt that."

Contact David Wecker at (513) 352-2791 or via e-mail at sambets

@choice.net.

Source: Cincinnati Post

More News in this Category