Posted on: Tuesday, November 20, 2001
Preemie lives past surgery to breath OK
By Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writer
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| Sandra Bumanglag and Jeric Balisbisana visit their baby, Jesa, at Children's Hopsital in Cincinnati, where she underwent surgery last month.
Tony Jones • Cincinnati Enquirer |
Jesa Balisbisana, who was born prematurely, may be the first child so young to survive a special kind of surgery to allow her to breathe.
But three months after Jesa's birth, her mother, Sandra Bumanglag, is still waiting to hear her miracle baby's cries.
Jesa Balisbisana wasn't supposed to have entered the world until Nov. 16.
She arrived three months early. She was so small that her father, Jeric Balisbisana, could fit his size-9 ring over her hand and all the way up to her elbow.
Jesa weighed only one pound and was slowly suffocating because her airway was so small, a problem her surgeon said happens to only about 20 children a year in the United States. Doctors in Honolulu didn't have small enough tubes to ease her breathing.
"Her airway was like the size of a spaghetti noodle," said her father, a 33-year-old food transporter for International In-Flight Catering Co.
The Internet connected a doctor in Honolulu to a specialist in Cincinnati who said that if doctors could keep Jesa alive long enough to get her weight up to three pounds, doctors there would rebuild her trachea in a procedure rarely done on a baby so small.
Jesa was short of the goal weight but too sick to wait when her doctors medically paralyzed her Sept. 26 and put her on an jet ambulance to Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati. Her parents followed on an airliner. By Oct. 8, Jesa was stable enough for surgery, and doctors cut her restricted airway and spliced the two large ends together.
Surgeon Mike Rutter said she may be the first child so young to survive such a procedure. Her trachea will grow along with her, and her mother hopes Jesa will be able to return to Kapi'olani Medical Center in time for the holidays.
The parents say the child already has taught them much about faith.
"This is not what I expected a pregnancy to be," said Bumanglag, a sales secretary at Schuler Homes. "It's been very stressful. There have been times when I really felt like giving up. I'm more positive now and hoping we'll get home soon."
Jesa took her first breaths on her own last week. Her weight is up to four pounds, 10 ounces. Once her airway heals, the crying will be next, followed by what her parents expect to be their own tears of joy.
Reach Tanya Bricking at tbricking@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8026.
