Colorado Hospital Team Braves Snowstorm to Rescue Sick Babies
Feb. 28--Sleeping soundly on Friday morning, Kolton neared the moment when doctors could remove a tube that had helped him breathe for five days.
Call it a moment of calm after the storm of his nearly week-old life.
On Sunday, Kolton, who suffers from a respiratory disorder, was one of two newborns who needed critical care at an Alamosa hospital during a statewide snowstorm. His condition -- as well as the birth of a baby who came three months early -- led a medical team from St. Francis Medical Center in northeast Colorado Springs to make two harried, 300-plus-mile trips to get them in ambulances.
Five days later, the babies were more stable, and doctors took Kolton off a ventilator Friday night. That opened the possibility of his parents holding him for the first time.
"It's almost like he's being born again," said his mother, Leeann Buxman, 29, shortly after the procedure.
The ordeal began at 8:12 a.m. Sunday, when she gave birth to Kolton, her third child with Chance Buxman, 29, and the 10th in their family.
Their first baby together suffered a diaphragmatic hernia, which is a hole in the diaphragm that pushed her heart to the side, crushing a lung. Their second baby had respiratory distress syndrome -- a condition affecting premature babies that killed the son of former President John F. Kennedy in 1963 within days of his birth.
They expected Kolton to buck the trend of complications. They also didn't expect him so soon -- his due date was March 23.
"We were experting something to happen around March 5 -- we were expecting maybe the full moon to do it," Chance Buxman said.
Rather, he arrived during a snowstorm. And shortly after birth, he had trouble breathing.
The diagnosis: another case of respiratory distress syndrome.
The condition can happen in babies born prematurely, usually when they lack a substance called surfactant, which gives elasticity to the lungs and helps reduce surface tension. A synthetic version can help babies breathe better.
Without a ventilator or surfactant for the baby, the condition is deadly.
"They sort of fool you -- they're born and they look like they're going to get better," said Janet Rae Wilson, a neonatal nurse practitioner at St. Francis. "And then they get really sick."
Doctors in Alamosa started him on the medication. Meanwhile, three people from St. Francis Medical Center were called to offer more advanced care -- driving five hours through blowing snow to reach him.
Moments after they got to the San Luis Valley Health Regional Medical Center, another mother arrived roughly three months before her due date, said Roger Curry, a respiratory therapist at St. Francis.
The St. Francis team's presence proved a stroke of luck.
At midnight, the medical team helped with that baby's birth, then drove the newborn back to Colorado Springs before sunrise Monday. One person stayed behind with Kolton, and another medical team ferried him to St. Francis.
"Been in Colorado a long time, and it was bad," Curry said. "He (the driver) just kept trucking along. We must have passed about 50 cars in the ditch."
Kolton arrived later Monday, and his condition has improved ever since.
He rests in a quiet hospital room, attached to a battery of wires and tubes while lying beneath special blue-wave lighting to treat jaundice. Nearby, his vitals grace a computer screen.
His parents have been offered rooms to sleep at the hospital.
"We just take it day by day," Leeann Buxman said.
Now he waits to make one more trip -- this time home.
Copyright 2015 - The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
