Daniel James was born 10 days late on October 31st, 2011; Halloween. He was beautiful and looked completely healthy. After handing him to his mother, the nurse, as an afterthought, remembered that his mother had been a gestational diabetic. Baby Daniel needed to have a glucose test to make sure his body was adjusting to the outside world. His glucose test came back at 18, a healthy baby should be in the 80’s.
They took Daniel to the NICU at Valley to watch him and make sure he regained control of his blood sugar after a dose of glucose. After 12 hours it became apparent that he was having more trouble than a baby should with his blood sugar, the neonatologists began to run other tests to find out why his body was not adjusting.
They found that his liver was not functioning properly, and even more troubling, he had calcifications in his brain. This was a puzzle because he had appeared so healthy at birth and there had been no indication of trouble during the pregnancy. It was determined that during the pregnancy there had been periodic blood loss to baby Daniel from the placenta causing irregularities in his growth and development. The most devastation of which was yet to be discovered.
At 6 days old, Daniel developed a life threatening infection in his small intestine called Necrotizing Enterocolitis, a condition that is rare on its own and then not usually seen in full term infants. -Necrotizing means “death of tissue” -Entero is “small bowel” -Col is “large bowel” and -itis meaning “infection,” -therefore an infection causing death of the small and large bowel. Unknown to anyone, one of the periods of placental blood loss had delayed development of Daniel’s intestine leaving him susceptible to this rare infection.
After consultation with pediatric surgeons at Swedish, it was determined that Daniel needed surgery to assess the extent of the damage to his intestine and a possible bowel resection. He was transported to Swedish and immediately rushed into surgery.
Prior to the surgery the doctors believed that his infection would likely not be extensive as it had come up so suddenly. After the surgery, it was determined that the infection was much more severe than anyone thought. The likelihood of baby Daniel surviving the infection were minimal and that if he were to survive, he would likely not has enough small intestine left to live. His parents were devastated.
It was expected that Daniel would not live 12 hours, that’s why when they saw he was still alive after 24 hours, the surgeons decided to take another look to see if his infection had begun to clear and if there was any small intestine left to salvage. The surgeons laid out two potential outcomes of a second surgery, first they would find a fully dead bowel and close him up so that his mother could hold him one last time or second, they would find enough bowel to give him a future and take out the dead bowel. The surgeons were clear that they did not expect to find anything and told Daniel’s parents not to get their hopes up.
After a long 3 hours, the surgeons came back with good news, they had found the infection reversing and were able to identify over half of Daniel’s bowel as viable, He would LIVE!
The next 5 days were hard for baby Daniel, he was in considerable pain and spent most of his time sedated. He was left with his bowel in 4 pieces inside of his belly to allow it time to fully heal before they go back in and reattach the pieces. He has a “stoma” to keep a section of bowel visible to the surgeons while he heals and is being fed by IV. Daniel will be in the NICU at Swedish for the next 4 to 5 months while he heals, all of the time being IV fed to keep up his nutrition and allow him to grow.
Baby Daniel has a long road but he is well cared for, all of the NICU nurses at Swedish have already fallen in love with him. He spends his “awake and alert” time flirting with the nurses and holding hands with them. Even after all he has been through in his short life, he is a happy baby. Daniel James is a miracle.
