Perseverance during a risky pandemic and earthquake | News

Editor’s note: The following story was reprinted with permission from Montana Radio Radio. Jolene Brink is a 2005 graduate from Grand Rapids High School and a Herald-Review intern.

The global epidemic has turned the hopes and expectations of the small Missoula family upside down. They say the experience radically changed them, not necessarily the worst.

Leo Marley Smith has a story of birth. It arrived much sooner than expected when it was delivered late last month through a Caesarean emergency.

“Liu was born almost seven weeks earlier,” says Liu’s father, John Smith.

When Smith and his wife Julien Brink knew last year that they would be parents, they never imagined that their son would be born about two months ago. So, imagine their amazement when he arrived – all three pounds of it – slapping him in the middle of a global pandemic.

“Yes, the time has been set well,” Brink says.

John and Julini are 33 years old. They have been together for over a decade. The couple moved to Missoula from Minnesota about five years ago and worked for a local high-tech company.

Brink and Smith are successful and steadfast and say they are intentional with their long-term goals. They planned a natural birth for Leo, which meant, if possible, no medical intervention or use of pain relievers. However, this hope was shattered during the routine prenatal examination in late March. This was when doctors discovered that Julien’s liver enzymes and the number of blood platelets were dangerously low. Meanwhile, her blood pressure was from the ceiling

“What was found was that Julen was called HLP syndrome,” says John. “It was a more important version of pre-eclampsia. The unfortunate reality at the time was that the only way to solve HELLP syndrome was to deliver the baby by emergency cesarean delivery as soon as possible.”

Brink was transferred to the Community Medical Center in Missoula, where the staff and child Liu saved her.

“In the first two days I felt very grateful that a hospital here had the resources to take care of me as they did,” Brink says. Two days later, he was realizing, like, “Oh my God – COVID is here. “They do everything they need to do to protect us, but I feel they are behind the front lines in one place where we don’t want to be.”

Brink was hospitalized for five days, during which the couple noticed a series of nerve-wracking changes.

“By the day we got out, the patients were wearing the masks, and the doctors were wearing the masks,” Brink says. “They were still allowing parents to enter the neonatal intensive care unit, but John, there was one night when I went to deliver milk to the nurse and noticed some PPE [personal protective equipment] Sitting outside the NICU door. I think we had a feeling that something was happening and watching it unfold. “

One day, John and Julien went out of the hospital to welcome briefly – regardless of social – a friend. When the visit was concluded, temperatures were taken at the hospital door. Jolene recorded at 99.9 degrees Fahrenheit.

Brink says, “There were some comments about how,” Well, if your temperature is above 100 degrees, you cannot go back inside. ”And I said,“ No, you don’t understand, I will go back inside because my child is back there. ” So John and I went back to our hospital room and cried and thought about what would happen if we couldn’t “get in.”

The couple say they understand logically that hospital staff were only trying to keep patients safe. But the accident was a stark reminder of how little control they had. Jolene says they leaned on each other like never before.

“Feeling, for the first time, this feeling of family, right? It was not like John and I. It was John, Liu, and me.”

This new feeling of family bonding will be helpful. The day Jolene was discharged from hospital, in fact, the moment she reached the pen to sign the papers, a 6.5-magnitude earthquake jolted the area.

“Everything felt very powerless at different levels.” Smith says, “At the mercy of doctors, surgeons, and nurses while in hospital, at the mercy of HELLP syndrome, they are hiding from the COVID-19 pandemic as best we can. While everything that happens earthquakes shakes and shakes the room. I think we were wrestling somewhat with the feeling that we were Young and control of the world is much less than we thought. “

Then John and Julien learned that they could no longer visit the neonatal intensive care unit at the same time that Liu was being cared for. They say this was a crushing blow, but they adapted and used remote video conferencing whenever possible.

“It’s just insane how things start to normalize,” Brink says. “We have a live broadcast that we connect to our computers. When one of us is at home, the other one can check in at any time during the day. It was very useful, just because I could see each other even if they weren’t actually in the same room.”

Baby Leo managed to return home on May 7, and his parents say he skips the milestones long before the deadline and helps the family once they are in good health.

Jolene and John both agree that they do not wish to have overprotected parents.

“It was a heavy start in the beginning and it will make a lot of things easier,” says Brink. “I think it would really help us get a lot of perspectives on what to worry about and what to leave. We had to be a certain type of parent much faster than we expected.”

Their advice to expect parents in these troubled times? They admit it will be a challenge, but adding it in the end will be good. They say it takes one day at a time. you are not alone.

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