“Baby No-Name”
On
a Saturday morning not too long ago, while most city residents where just
waking up to enjoy the start of their weekend activities, members of the Manassas
City Fire and Rescue Department and Greater Manassas Volunteer Rescue Squad
(GMVRS) were responding to an “OB” (obstetrics) call. According to dispatch,
a resident was in labor – six weeks before her due date.
However, this call would be different. While enroute, the responding crews were informed by dispatch that the baby had been delivered in the bathroom. Dispatch was maintaining phone contact with the person who was assisting the new mom deal with her “still attached” (umbilical cord) son. Upon arrival on scene, the medics and EMTs found mom holding her son in the living room on the couch. The baby was dark blue and unresponsive – not a good sign – meaning, that the lungs weren’t functioning and the little guy wasn’t getting oxygen to “wake up” his organs, especially his brain. His eyes were closed and he wasn’t moving. This would be a “load and go” call – that is, load the patient into the ambulance and go as fast as (safely) possible to the closest hospital.
Before
transport, however, the patient needed to be “unhooked” from mom and treated.
The “unhooking” process was relatively easy. Each ambulance in the city is
equipped with “
Once “unhooked”, the baby’s mouth was suctioned, quickly wrapped in a sheet, and carried by one of the medics to the waiting ambulance. Once inside the unit, the newborn was placed on one end of the stretcher in a “sniffing” position (to open the airway) and held there by one of the EMTs, who started infant CPR using his thumbs to compress the tiny chest at 100 compressions per minute. Simultaneously, a medic was placing the BVM over the baby’s face and compressing its small rubber bag every 3-5 seconds, forcing in life-giving oxygen. The EMT doing compressions could feel the torso expanding as the BVM’s bag was compressed. To warm the patient, unopened 1000 milliliter bags of warm saline solution were placed on each of his sides. While this was going on – all in the space of 1-2 minutes – another medic was attaching electrodes to the four corners of the tiny torso. The electrodes, one inch diameter sticky pads with a metal “button” in the middle, are attached to wire leads from the LifePak. When applied they took up most of the little guy’s body. The LifePak’s monitor showed that there was heart activity, but because of the CPR and moving ambulance, a rate and rhythm could not be determined. CPR continued. At one point during transport, faint sounds, like that of a muffled cry, could be heard. He was trying to “wake up” and his skin was changing ever so subtly from blue to pink – a sign he was starting to benefit from the oxygen.
At
the hospital’s Emergency Room (ER) ambulance entrance, the emergency response
from the scene ended, but CPR continued as the patient was taken by stretcher
to one of the ER’s trauma rooms. Because the hospital’s ER staff was called
by the one of the medics in the ambulance while enroute – standard practice
for all calls - there were several attending doctors and nurses ready to take
over patient care. While the lead medic gave an oral report of the patient’s
condition to the lead nurse, “baby no name” as one nurse called him, was carefully
moved from the stretcher to the neonatal “bed”, all while CPR continued.
Oxygen tubing was transferred to the ER’s system and the rescue crew slowly
withdrew from the room with their stretcher, retreating to the
You
might be wondering what happened to mom during all this confusion? Yes, she
was left behind by the ambulance who took her new son, but not without receiving
good pre-hospital care and a ride from another ambulance which was also dispatched
to the scene from
After delivering their patients to the ER and transferring care, rescue crews rarely get the opportunity to stick around to find our how they made out during their hospital treatment. After writing their reports and restocking their ambulance with supplies used during the call, they go “back in service”, available for another dispatch. In the case of “baby no-name”, the crew left the hospital with a feeling of hope and expectation that this case was going to turn out well. Unfortunately, what the crew didn’t know at the time, was that the little boy was suffering from a rare genetic disorder that resulted in underdeveloped kidneys and lungs – insufficient to sustain life. Two days after his birth, it was learned, the painful decision was made by the family to discontinue life support activities. Not all life threatening calls end up with happy endings. Lives can be touched and changed, sometimes forever, by what brings rescue crews to the scene of an accident or medical emergency, including the lives of the rescue personnel.
One might ask, what allows these crews to regroup and carry on after tough calls like “Baby No-Name”? Whereas, each staff and volunteer has their own way of “dealing with it”, there is a small card posted on the bulletin board in the radio room at the GMVRS that suggests how some do. It’s called the EMT Serenity Prayer and reads:
“God grant me the serenity to give emergency care with skill and compassion; courage to deal with every situation when lives are on the line, to the best of my abilities; and wisdom to know that I can do only so much, and the rest is in Your hands.”
By
sharing this story with the community, it is hoped that those who read it
will gain more insight to the work performed by the city and county’s
Pete
Rockx
EMT-B
Vice
President, GMVRS