Jenna Sander didn’t make it. Wednesday afternoon doctors told her parents, Doug and Katrina Sander of
Bringle Ferry Road, what they already knew.
It was too late for their tiny
year-old baby who had been at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh for nearly three
months.
She was there waiting for two new
organs – a small bowel and a liver – that would give her life.
And if the organs had come, if
they had come in time, she would have had the experimental double transplant her parents
had taken her to Pittsburgh to get – and a chance at life.
But they didn’t come.
And things got worse. And worse.
And by Wednesday the doctors had to say what they’d been hinting at for weeks. Hope
was gone.
Now, if organs suddenly were
there, they said, little Jenna wouldn’t come off the operating table.
And the decision her parents hoped
they’d never have to make was made. Remove life support.
Gradually doctors cut back on the
10 or 12 medications trying to work their magic on her tiny body. They stopped the blood
exchanges she had been getting every other day. Stopped replacing platelets. And Doug and
Katrina and Katrina’s mother, Janet Isenhour, sat beside her bed, touching their
baby, talking to her, holding her, rocking her a little, memorizing her tiny face, her
hands, her feet, making sure she knew how much they loved her, saying goodbye ...
And at 10:30 Wednesday night she
died.
Jenna had never eaten.
She was born May 1, 1998, with her
abdominal organs outside her body.
The abnormality – known as
gastrochisis – occurs randomly in one of every 50,000 newborn babies. And doctors
don’t know why.
Complications following her birth
made the usual – and generally successful – surgical repair impossible. Katrina
and Doug were living in Ohio when she was born but came home so Katrina’s parents,
Janet and Ed Isenhour, could help them look after her.
But even with the help, with
Janet’s skills as a nurse, it was a hard year. Jenna was in and out of the hospital.
They had to be ready to travel from Rowan to the operating table in Pittsburgh within four
hours of getting a call that organs were available.
And finally an infection convinced
doctors she needed to be at the hospital, not here, and they sent a private plane and
picked her up on April 2.
While they struggled with illness,
Katrina and Doug also struggled with bills. Katrina’s job was the baby. Doug, who
loads trucks for Fast Food Distributors, had to get off often and missed paychecks.
So Trinity Wesleyan Church set up
a fund to help them.
‘‘And the monies that
came in have been a blessing,’’ says good friend, Melinda Setzer. The church and
people they didn’t know were generous.
And time passed. Jenna struggled,
too. And, despite her struggle, gladdened hearts. She began to say
‘‘Dada,’’ ‘‘Mama,’’
‘‘bye-bye.’’
Her chances of survival would have
been 50 percent if she had received the donor organs before more complications came –
but her parents were realistic. They flew with her to Pittsburgh knowing the odds, but
confident, expecting the transplant. And life. She was at the top of the list.
But more problems cropped up. Hope
waned. And her grandmother documented the days in e-mails home.
‘‘Today I felt like
Peter,’’ she wrote on May 24, a Monday, in the wee hours of the morning.
‘‘It was easy for him to believe he could walk on water when he was sitting in
the boat, but his perspective changed when the sidewalk beneath his feet was liquid.
‘‘My sidewalk was liquid
today when Jenna was fighting to breath, just lying there, her liver in complete failure,
her kidneys right on the edge and fluid collecting in her lungs. ...
‘‘If her condition
deteriorates any more, she will be removed from the list.’’
Her tiny toes, she wrote, almost
stepped across that line, that point of no return, ‘‘but just at that instant,
as the waves of fear swirled and roared around me, her condition changed before my eyes.
...
‘‘Her little eyes opened
and turned to search for a familiar face, and although she was in so much pain and
distress, an occasional fleeting smile pushed its way to the surface of her parched lips,
and tiny discolored fingers reached for my face.
‘‘You will not take her
from us today, God, but what about tomorrow? Will that long awaited, hoped for, prayed
for, believed for life-giving miracle come to revolutionize all our lives? Or will you
push open the gates of heaven and gather this tiny treasure to yourself?’’
She wrote another e-mail at 7:30
Thursday morning to say it was over. To thank friends for prayers and love.
‘‘Jenna fought her way
back from so many seemingly insurmountable complications that we began to think there
wasn’t anything she couldn’t conquer,’’ she wrote.
‘‘However, about one
week ago she went into a slide from which she just could not recover.’’
And Wednesday night ‘‘a
very brave and strong little girl was released from her plastic tubing fetters and allowed
to soar freely, unrestrained, into the arms of Jesus.
‘‘No gift has ever
brought us such joy, no loss, such void. What a privilege to have been greeted for so many
mornings with the sunshine of her smile. To have given so much to so many in so short a
period of time describes the miracle of Jenna.’’
And Thursday her parents and her
grandmother did all the things they had to do. Packed the cars. Headed home.
In Faith, Ed Isenhour, who had
come home Sunday after a long weekend vigil at the hospital in Pittsburgh, waited again,
this time surrounded by close friends from his Bible study group. Waited for the sound of
cars coming home.
And this morning early they made
their final plans. Funeral services for Jenna will take place Saturday afternoon at 2:30
at Trinity Wesleyan Church, 2200 Mooresville Road.
‘‘We had been encouraged
with her being there as long as she was,’’ he says, ‘‘but she
didn’t get the organs she needed. And the Lord knows best.’’
They’ve all been touched by
the miracle of Jenna.
Contributions may still be made to
the Trinity Wesleyan Church, 2200 Mooresville Road, Salisbury, N.C. 18147, earmarked for
Jenna Sander. |
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