On Nov. 24, 2002, Chris and Jill Richards welcomed a new baby into their life with the birth of Courtney Sue.
\nCourtney was five weeks premature, but seemed healthy at five pounds, 11 ounces.
\nBut 16 hours after the birth, the problems began.
\nCourtney Sue was having trouble eating. She was grunting and moaning while consuming food. The Richards knew it wasn\u2019t normal.
\n\u201cIt was really scary,\u201d said Jill. \u201cThe whole ordeal was the worst thing I\u2019ve ever had to deal with in my entire life. It\u2019s one of those deals where you tell yourself that it could never happen to me. But it did.\u201d
\nDoctors at Tyrone Area Hospital worked feverishly on Courtney Sue. Soon, they discovered she was suffering from a collapsed left lung that forced her delicate heart to the right side of her chest.
\nAfter a few hours, the trauma team had the infant stabilized and a call was made to Conemaugh Helath Systems. She needed additional treatment that Tyrone Hospital couldn\u2019t provide.
\n\u201cThey couldn\u2019t pick her up by LifeFlight because there was a 300 foot ceiling,\u201d said Mr. Richards. \u201cThey had to move her down to the first floor so they could load her into a vehicle to tranport her to Johnstown.
\n\u201cBut she couldn\u2019t handle all that movement. She took a turn for the worse,\u201d he said. \u201cThe oxygen in her blood was decreasing and she was having real difficulties with breathing.\u201d
\nThe infant was taken back upstairs and was again stablized by TAHS doctors and nurses.
\n\u201cA doctor from Conemaugh Hospital in Johnstown heard the situation unfolding on the radio,\u201d said Mrs. Richards. \u201cHe immediately garnered a state police escort to get him to Tyrone as quickly as possible. This man saved my baby\u2019s life.\u201d
\nThat doctor was Mohammad Riaz, who works in Conemaugh\u2019s Regional Intensive Care Nursery. He was able to insert a chest tube into young Courtney Sue and stablized her breathing until a transport was ready for transfer to the Children\u2019s Hospital in Pittsburgh.
\nFor the next 11 days, Mr. Richards stood by his daughter\u2019s side.
\n\u201cThat was a very terrible time for me,\u201d said Mrs. Richards. \u201cI wasn\u2019t with my baby and I didn\u2019t know what was going on.\u201d
\nFor the first six days in Pittsburgh, baby Courtney was hooked to a ventilator to assist with breathing. Doctors administered a drug known as Surfactant, used to lubricate the lungs.
\nAccording to Mr. Richards, Surfactant is a naturally produced chemical that begins lubricating infant lungs with just weeks to go in the pregnancy. He said because Courtney was born five weeks premature, she didn\u2019t have the ability to produce the essential chemical.
\n\u201cBasically what happened to her was like when you blow up a balloon and leave all the air out,\u201d he said. \u201cThe inside walls of the balloon stick together. It\u2019s the same situation in a newborn\u2019s lungs. If that chemical isn\u2019t being produced, the inside of the the lungs\u2019 walls will stick together. That\u2019s what happened.\u201d
\nFinally, little Courtney started getting better. She was released from the hospital and is now beginning a healthy lifestyle in Tipton with her parents and three siblings, Matt, Katelynn and Krista.
\n\u201cShe\u2019s doing real good now,\u201d said Mrs. Richards. \u201cShe has to get a shot once a month during the flu season (February, March and April), but other than that, she\u2019s healthy and doing okay.\u201d
\nThree weeks ago, baby Courtney tipped the scales at 10 pounds, 13 ounces. This week, she\u2019s up to nearly 12 pounds.
\nBecause of Courtney\u2019s situation, the local chapter of the March of Dimes, a nationwide organization dedicated to funding research to precent premature births and birth defects, has selected Courtney as its ambassador.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s an exciting opportunity to let people know Courtney\u2019s story and also raise awareness of the organization and its cause,\u201d said Mrs. Richards. \u201cThe group is phenomenal and has really been an inspiration to our family.\u201d
\nAs ambassador, Courtney will attend different functions and events across the state to raise awareness of premature births and the effect they have on newborns. She will be ambassador for a full year, and possibly longer.
\nCurrently, the March of Dimes is scheduling its annual Walk America fundraiser for April 27 at Legion Park in Hollidaysburg. Also, Mrs. Richards is helping to organize an April dance to help raise funds for the on-profit organization.
\n\u201cIf it wouldn\u2019t have been for our church, Grace Baptist in Tyrone and Pastor Roy Garthwaite, I don\u2019t know what we would have done,\u201d said Mrs. Richards. \u201cThe entire community really pulled together and helped us when we needed it most.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Nov. 24, 2002, Chris and Jill Richards welcomed a new baby into their life with the birth of Courtney Sue. Courtney was five weeks premature, but seemed healthy at five pounds, 11 ounces. But 16 hours after the birth, the problems began. Courtney Sue was having trouble eating. She was grunting and moaning while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}