Story submitted by Nicolas Pelletier on April 24, 1999 at 07:18:17:
Nicolas Pelletier is 33, from Saint-Lazare Quebec Canada.
Family:Im married with a 27 y old Manon and we are aprents of Samuel who is 5 mths
Bonjour,
im the proud father of a beautiful boy nammed Samuel. He was born in Montréal at the Sainte-Justine hospital for children. Sam was a 6 pound baby born one week before time. Everything went great all 9 month for Samuel and my whife Manon...exept for the last day. We got to the hospital in the middle of the night, Manon was having big contractions at the start. She tried all night to endure the pain but early in the morning she got an "epidural" to take off the pain. 3 hours later the heart beats came down and Manon felt great pain. The doctors did another echo and noticed Samuel had changed his foetal position to a breech presentation. The doctors told us there were no risk in doing a vaginal birth. He said that Manon had an olympic pelvis...she is 5'5 and 110 pounds... we were sceptical but when the obs tells u there are no risks... you dont feel the need to go on the www to get information... At 3 pm after 15 hours of labor it was delivery time... First, the testicules came and they were purple. Then the bum showed it self and after a while, the doctor put his fingers to help the legs to come out. He asked Manon to not keep pushing to get the baby out. I was there and god she worked hard to give life to that baby but suddenly i saw panic in the intern's face. She grabed the forceps and pulled.. no result..the Obs then grabed the forceps but also no results...he then placed it self like a quarterback and pulled the baby out...I was not beleiving what i was seeing...i sill see it in my mind when i go to bed at night. Sam was not breathing and was in cardiac destress. A few seconds later he came back and screamed his lungs out...what a releif. He was sent to ICU for 48 hours because of abnormal breathing...i was under an oxygen tent. He left ICU for transition care. Its the first time we could actually take him in our arms. When Manon took him in her arms he grabbed her breast with his mouth instinctively. The neonatalogist told us that there was a small problem with his arms but with good PT everything would be OK. We met the PT and did all exercises.
Wow...after a few weeks the left arm started moving but nothing in the right arm. Our pediatrician was sceptical and wanted us to meet with an Orthopedis surgeon. We met this guy a few times. Samuel also wnnt thrue 2 Emg. The last time the neuro told Manon that there were great improvements and an hour later the Ortho tells us we needed surgery... what to think. Two specialist in the same hopital saying diff things. So our pediatrician got us arranged a meeting with a neurourgeon. At this time Samuel is now 4.5 months so we know time is important. That neurosurgeon in Mtl told us there were no real brachial plexus clinic. So there are no TEAM evaluating the kids. She had done 5 primary surgeries. That day...Dr.Nath from the TCH phoned our place to tell us that ther was a good doctor in Toronto for that kind of surgery. The next day we were in contact with Dr.Clarke's clinic. We got an appointement the next week. Toronto is 5-6 hours drive from our place but we did not care at all.
For the first time we felt we were humans not just another patient. For the first time at 5 months Samuel was well evaluated and when we left that place we knew what to expect. So Samuel will have a primary surgery in June.
As parents, we are very mad at Sainte-justine hospital for the way they treated us and Samuel. the doctors who gave birth to Samuel never talked to us about a C-section...never it was a subject of discussion. We were told there was no risk... and by the way that olympis pelvis was not so olympic... Manon's pelvic bones never came back together...
What is happening with all the other kids in Montréal and all around. There is nothing and the system offers nothing. The strongest will obtain the best... its a barbarian way of thinking.
Nicolas
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