The Rescue of Linus 

By Jerry Sleep

Linus Lazar Sleep was born at home near Goodhope Missouri, at 7:02, Sunday, December 30, 2012. His weight and length at birth are somewhat unknown. We think he weighed around 9 pounds 11 ounces. He was born just seconds after his bag of waters broke. There was some meconium in the fluids. He looked sort of gray in color and was not consistently breathing well. He was breathing and cried and coughed quite a bit. We thought that possibly meconium was blocking his breathing, so we suctioned his mouth and nose pretty well and gave him vigorous thumps on the back with his head slightly lowered. Right around 8am we saw that he was breathing less and shallow and his arms and legs were limp so we called 911 and with the direction of the operator, my wife Joy started CPR. Joy and I took turns keeping the CPR going on Linus until EMTs arrived.

 Our bedroom is in the basement. All the children had came down to take a quick look at Linus right after he was born and went back upstairs. They were all still upstairs, not knowing what was going on. I called upstairs to ask Sam to open the gate so the ambulance could come in quickly. The Goodhope Fire Department came within a few minutes and started resuscitation on Linus. Soon the Cox EMTs from Ava came with the ambulance and within a short time they took him four and a half miles south to Goodhope to catch a ride on a helicopter transport to Cox South Hospital in Springfield, MO. I heard that the flight took about 12 minutes.

My oldest daughter Pattie, had a list of phone numbers of people to call to notify them about the birth. As the EMT people showed up, she began calling everyone she could to let them know of the emergency situation and to ask for lots of prayer. The word spread very quickly and before long, Linus had hundreds of people praying for him. I guess by the end of the day on his birthday, he most likely had a thousand people or more praying for him.

 Before the ambulance left to take Linus south, I kissed Joy good-bye, grabbed my oldest son Sam and we headed north toward Springfield. We traveled fast and we got to the NICU (Newborn Intensive Care Unit) at Cox South Hospital only about 30 minutes after Linus got there. When we arrived the lady at the front desk told us to wait and a doctor would come out and take us back. A man came out and asked if I was Linus's Dad. He said he was not a doctor, he was the Chaplin. I don't need to say what went through my mind when he told me that he was a Chaplin. He eventually told me that Linus was still alive and took us back to the NICU. I quickly signed the release papers so they could begin blood transfusions, etc. Up to this time, we thought we was having some problem with his lungs. We did not know that he was suffering stage 4 hypovolemic shock caused by a fetal-maternal hemorrhage shortly before his birth; he had lost over half of his blood through the placenta into Joy's blood stream.

When Sam and I first saw Linus laying in the bed at the Springfield NICU, he was awake, he seemed somewhat alert and his eyes where open. He was visibly upset about having the tube down his throat and all the things that were happening to him and being so sick. Soon they gave him a drug to essentially paralyze him, to conserve his strength and let the machines do the work for him. That was the last I saw of his beautiful blue eyes for six long days.

As the day proceeded, the nurses worked on him constantly. He had at least three transfusions of various "blood products". He was on a monitor and even after transfusions, we could see that his blood oxygen level remained low. Early in the afternoon the attending physician at the NICU told us that she thought Linus should be transferred to Kansas City or St Louis. But, in his current state, she didn't think he would survive the trip. My cell phone did not pickup reception in the NICU, but I could get reception about 50 feet down the hall from the NICU. I was going in and out of the NICU all day, calling home to let them know what was going on. I went out and called home to tell Joy that they needed to transfer him but that the doctor thought he wouldn't survive the transfer trip. I remember the horrible grief and sadness as I had to tell my wife that our son might soon die. I finished the call and went back in the NICU. While I was gone they had put him on a new ventilator and his blood oxygen level went from around 50% up to over 90%. He was stabilizing!  We did not know at the time, but from this time forward, Linus would remain stable throughout the transfer and throughout his recovery. I did not realize at the time the number of intense prayers that were being prayed for Linus. God's mighty hand of protection was on Linus!

 For whatever reason that I don't know, I requested the transfer to St Louis and not Kansas City. So the process began for a transfer to St Louis Children's Hospital. The word got to us that the transfer flight team would be there at about 3:00pm. We waited. Then the word was they would arrive at 3:30pm. Then the word was they would arrive at 4:00pm. Sometime between 4:30 and 5:00 pm they arrived. I have to say when they walked into the NICU it was one of the most awesome sights I have ever seen. An MD, two RNs and the pilots, all dressed in very cool blue and black flight suits. They had a gurney stacked five feet high with battery powered equipment and medical bags, etc. There seemed to be an aire of respect and awe heavy in the room (this could have been more in my imagination than reality, but that's the way I remember it). These guys are SUPER HEROES!!!

At the time of the arrival of the transport team, Linus was on at least four lines of drip IVs of various drugs, he was on a big oscillating ventilator with a Nitric Oxide machine in the mix and he was on a cooling pad that requires a pretty sizable machine. So how do you transport a little guy that has spaghetti tubing coming out of him all over the place and several big machines attached to him keeping him alive? Answer: very carefully. The process took over two hours. They determined he should have another transfusion of platelets before he left. That takes about an hour to infuse into him. No problem, all the other work they had to do took longer anyway. Dr Phil (not the TV doctor) was the transfer doctor. He was great. He explained everything that was going on to Sam and I. He had a way of putting us at ease as much as possible in a situation like this. The RNs, Jeff and Ashley, worked furiously switching over to the transfer machinery and keeping Linus stable.

Eventually everything was switched over ready for transport except the ventilator. The ventilator transfer proved to be tedious. Dr Phil said, if he had to, he could hand pump a manual bulb ventilator all way to St Louis. They tried several settings on the ventilator and they tried switching him to a hand pump bulb. Nothing was working. Every time they switched him over his heart rate and oxygen level would plummet. Finally, Dr. Phil came over to Sam and me and said something like, "There's one more thing we can try". I turned to Sam and said something like, "Pray hard, Sam!" They adjusted the setting on the oscillator and administered some epinephrine into his breathing tube as Sam and I prayed with all we had. They turned the valve to switch over. IT WORKED! his heart rate and blood oxygen stayed up and he was stable for transport.

Around this time Dr. Phil asked me a couple of times if I could go with him on the plane with Linus to St Louis. He wanted me to be there in case things didn't go well on the transport (so to speak). I knew that I could not go without Joy, so I graciously declined.

As they prepared to move Linus onto the gurney, Sam and I left the NICU for the hour drive home from Springfield. When we got home, we prepared a bed of blankets in the back seat of the truck, got our suitcases, and Joy and I took off for a late night trip from Goodhope to St Louis. On the way there, somewhere around Rolla on I44, we got a call on the cell phone from Dr Phil. Linus had survived the trip and was resting stable in his room at St Louis Children's. When we arrived at Children's Hospital at 1:40am on Monday morning, Linus was all hooked up and lying in his new bed in critical, but stable condition.

This is the story as I remember it. Don't hold me responsible if I got somethings wrong. It was an emotional, adrenalin filled day and my "reality" was probably slightly skewed. For example I later found out that when Dr Phil said, "There's one more thing we can try", what he was trying to say was, 'Don't worry, there are some other things we can try and we'll get him switched over' and what I heard him say was, 'one last thing to try, this is do or die'!

The story of Linus's recovery is journaled in a file of all the status emails that we sent during his time in St Louis. We have posted this PDF file at www.generalguitargadgets.com\pdf\linus_status.pdf . 

Linus is a miracle baby.  December 30, 2012 was a miraculous day to me.He survived the birth. He survived two transfer flights and three ambulance rides.  He retained enough oxygen with his very limited blood supply for seven hours, so that none of his organs suffered any known damage. It's too early to say that he won't have any long term effects from this trauma. But I know God preserved our little boy and I know many, many prayers sustained him through the day and the next day and through the month of January 2013.