An angel

[natalie]

Since the general nursing board is down, I'll post this here. It's just a great story and kudos to the nurse.

http://www.superior-wi.com/placed/index.php?sect_rank=1&story_id=76415&refer_url=

Quick-thinking nurse saves life of infant

Hayward woman was in Duluth store when infant stopped breathing

Susan Anderson

The Daily Telegram

Last Updated: Wednesday, June 27th, 2001 10:51:50 AM

Jennifer Brannan of Superior keeps a close eye on her infant son, Jonathon these days, as does his aunt and grandmother. Last week Jonathan was happily cooing for his mother, just weeks before he had become suddenly ill and stopped breathing while in a store with his grandmother, Heidi Belford.

Belford said he was in his car seat that was snapped to the cart when she heard him spit up. She picked up the seven-week old infant but he was lifeless and his lips were beginning to turn blue.

"He was limp. I flipped him over and I gave him three quick little breaths," said Belford. Her daughter had gone to another store, leaving Jonathan with his grandmother at Shopko, in Duluth's Stone Ridge Mall. Belford said she ran toward the changing rooms where she was certain there would be a telephone.

"I was probably hysterical," said Belford. She spotted a store clerk and called out to her to call 911 because her baby wasn't breathing.

Then a woman appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and took the infant from Belford -- everything started to fall into place as though from a script that the players had reheorificed.

The woman turned to a nearby cart, removed a small ironing board and placed Jonathan's lifeless little body on it while simultaneously feeling for a pulse. Calling to the store clerk that there was none, she went to work, gently tapping Jonathan's chest and breathing the life-saving little puffs over his nose and mouth.

The store clerk relayed the information to the 911 operator and by the time the paramedics arrived, minutes later, Jonathan's little body had developed a normal pink color again and his pulse had returned. The paramedics gave him oxygen.

"Someone was behind me rubbing my shoulder. I don't know who. I was shaking terribly," said Belford.

Brannan, who had left her mother and Jonathan to briefly visit a nearby store, was returning to Shopko to join them when the emergency vehicles were arriving. In the confusion she heard someone say a baby had stopped breathing.

"And then I knew. I just knew it was Jonathon," said Brannan. She ran inside to see the paramedics working on her baby.

Jonathan stopped breathing in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and he stopped breathing once again when he was in the emergency room, said Brannan. "They just cut his clothes off him and went to work."

The baby was hospitalized with a respirator doing the breathing for five of the 12 days he was there. He was treated for pneumonia.

"The chaplain told us that night at the hospital that God sends angels to us," said Belford.

And the angel who was in Shopko the day Jonathan needed one is a real-life nurse at the Hayward Area Memorial Hospital. Glenda Kramp was quietly leaving the store when a Shopko employee stopped her to get her name.

Kramp, reached at the hospital this morning, recalled the day in Duluth when her skills were put to use. A registered nurse who often works in the hospital nursery, Kramp nonetheless had never had the opportunity to administer CPR on an infant.

"It happened very quickly," said Kramp. "I guess the training you learn comes back and you just do what you're trained to do. If somebody hadn't, I don't think that baby would have made it."

Brannan, who has not yet talked to Kramp, said she plans to telephone her to let her know how Jonathan is doing and to acknowledge her as a hero.

Belford agreed: "Nowadays people are so afraid of lawsuits but there still are some good Samaritans who are trying to help and I thank God every day that there are."