Baby’s home for Christmas after six months in hospital
VANCOUVER — A sandwich shop in downtown New Westminster was the only restaurant open when Jeff and Ashley Durance set out in search of Christmas dinner.
It was Dec. 24, 2016, and the Chilliwack couple had two hours to themselves after spending the day at Royal Columbian Hospital near the bedsides of their baby daughter, Hazel, and Ashley’s father, Rick Walsh.
As other children left milk and cookies for Santa, the premature baby and her grandfather were both hooked up to ventilators. Their hospital beds — one in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, and the other in the cardiac intensive care — were a short walk from each other.
“Right from the beginning, Jeff and I agreed we couldn’t change the cards we had been dealt,” said Ashley, almost one year after her daughter was born prematurely. “We had to make the best of it, and so we did.”
They returned to the hospital after their Subway supper and read Twas the Night Before Christmas to the tiny child hooked to machines inside an incubator.
Six weeks earlier, on Nov. 7, 2016, Ashley was at home in Chilliwack when she started to have stomach pain.
She was worried it was early labour, so she called her husband at work and then asked her sister to take her to the Chilliwack hospital.
Once there, doctors discovered her blood pressure was perilously high and creeping higher. She was diagnosed with HELLP syndrome, a life-threatening liver disorder linked to preeclampsia.
The only known treatment is delivery.
At 23 weeks gestation, a baby’s survival rate is about 50 per cent with access to the best care, said Royal Columbian neonatologist Dr. Miroslav Stavel.
Royal Columbian, one of four provincial health centres dedicated to caring for B.C.’s smallest and sickest babies, has one of the best survival rates for premature babies in the country, according to the Canadian Neonatal Network. Before she was rushed to the New Westminster hospital, Ashley was given a shot of steroids to help develop her baby’s lungs in preparation for delivery.
HELLP usually becomes increasingly serious over a few days, but in Ashley’s case, it progressed rapidly. Her blood pressure skyrocketed, causing a splitting headache that would make it difficult for her to remember what happened later. Her platelet count dropped, and her red blood cells and liver began to deteriorate.
“I remember bits and pieces. I was told I needed to deliver or I wouldn’t survive the night,” said Durance. “I asked for an epidural so I could be awake. My biggest fear was that when I woke up from the anesthesia, she wouldn’t be alive anymore.”
But Ashley was told she needed to be sedated. Because of her low platelet count, an epidural would cause bleeding that could result in paralysis.
As she came out of anesthetic, she remembers her husband saying, “Ash, we have a girl.” “I knew it,” she replied. “What should we name her?” “Hazel.” Later, when Ashley was more awake, her husband would confirm the baby’s name. The nurses joked that it was too late to change it as they had already fallen in love with little Hazel.
Ashley spent two weeks in hospital recovering from kidney and liver failure.
Meanwhile, Hazel had ups and downs of her own. At 420 grams, she weighed about the same as a bag of miniature marshmallows. The Canadian Neonatal Network recorded just 40 babies weighing less than 500 grams born in Canada in 2016.
On Hazel’s fourth night in hospital, the family was told to prepare for the worst. Her organs began to shut down and she became septic. Somehow, the little girl pulled through.
A month and a half later, her grandfather joined her in hospital for quadruple bypass surgery.
“It was a weird feeling,” Ashley said.
“The cardiac ICU is literally across the hall from the NICU. On Christmas, my dad was intubated and my daughter was intubated in the same hospital.”
Walsh went home a few days later, while Hazel remained at Royal Columbian for six months. During that time, the Durance family grew close to the nurses, doctors and physiotherapists.
“So many days I cried in the parking lot,” Ashley said. “But it’s not lost on me how fortunate we are. We came so close to losing her. … No one ever gave up.”
This year, the little family will host Christmas Eve dinner at their Chilliwack home for Ashley’s mother and her husband, as well as her father.
“My parents are divorced, so we’ve never done it this way before. But Hazel brought my family closer together. It will be really special.”