Julia Alemany’s road to motherhood on Tuesday included an epidural by flashlight, an anxious escape down eight flights of stairs and a harrowing trip in an ambulance that was struck by a tree branch in the storm.
The 34 year old researcher from Greenpoint, Brooklyn had done her best to prepare for the birth of her second child.
She and her husband, Doron Markus, 41, were staying in an apartment near NYU ahead of her due date on Saturday but when her contractions began at 6 p.m Monday as Sandy bore down on the city, she could not have prepared for what would happen next.
SANDY'S AFTERMATH: LIVE COVERAGE AND UP-TO-THE-MINUTE UPDATES
A doctor at NYU’s eighth floor maternity ward initially said her contractions were too far apart and tried to send her home, but Alemany refused to budge.
“Are you kidding?” she recalled saying. “Do you see what’s going on outside?” The doctor agreed to admit her.
Then, around 9 p.m., the hospital went dark – and things got worse.
“Suddenly, I hear a lot of commotion outside and the word ‘Fire!’” Alemany told The Daily News Tuesday. “There was smoke at the end of the corridor, everyone was running.”
But contractions were ripping through her body. “I said ‘I can’t run!’”
The fire turned out to be a false alarm, but the chaos had only just begun.
Hospital administrators discovered that their backup generators were submerged in water in the basement and the building was no longer safe.
She was told she’d have to evacuate, but begged for pain relief until doctors agreed to give her a low-dose epidural.
In her pitch-black hospital room, an anesthesiologist administered the drug into her spine by flashlight and the glow of a couple of cell phones as labor pains wracked her body.
She was still in pain as three burly security guards put her on a sled and hustled her down eight flights of stairs, flashlights leading their way. Some had headlamps, making them look more like coalminers than medical staff, but the staff were kind and encouraging, she said.
“They must have asked me if I was OK 20 million times,” Alemany said.
Alemany was among 215 patients who were evacuated. Ten were expectant moms who were hauled from NYU but she was one of only two who were in active labor and the contractions were becoming more than she could bear, she said.
As she and her husband were loaded into an ambulance with an NYU nurse, the epidural was starting to wear off. Then she heard a question from her driver that was the last thing she wanted to hear:
“Do you know how to get to Mt. Sinai?”
The driver of the ambulance was a FEMA employee from California who had just arrived to help during the storm.
The nurse was able to instruct the driver, but the ambulance still had to navigate storm-ravaged streets as the rain and wind pounded the city. Maddeningly, cops diverted the ambulance several times as it made its way north. A tree branch even fell on the vehicle.
“I hope you don’t have this baby in the ambulance!” Alemany recalled the nurse telling her.
At midnight, Alemany, originally from Barcelona, arrived at the hospital. Her obstetrician, Dr. John Wirth, was able to wrangle a taxi and race to Mt. Sinai in time. Forty minutes after she arrived at Mt. Sinai, little Micah Alemany-Markus finally appeared at 12:48 a.m., weighing 7 pounds, 15 ounces.
“I was just so happy when I saw him, and he was safe,” said Alemany of her day-old son. “There were a couple of times I was so afraid.”
As she held her tiny boy in her Mt. Sinai hospital bed Tuesday afternoon, she seemed relieved.
“I never thought his birth would be anything like this,” she said, beaming. "It was the most intense experience of my life."
All of the 215 patients evacuated safely with 58 landing at Mt. Sinai. The rest were taken to other hospitals.
"We drill and prepare for these emergencies, and when it came, it paid off,” said Dr. Michael Bordman, chief of obstetrics at Mount Sinai said. “We were ready.”
Alemany’s husband, an assistant principal in Edgemont school district, praised the NYU staff who kept their cool under extreme circumstances.
“In spite of chaos they were really able to make us feel calm,” Markus said. “Their doctors were incredible.”
President Obama agreed, calling out the NYU nurses and other selfless heroes during the storm as “the brightest in America.”
“That kind of spirit of resilience and strength, but most importantly looking out for one another — that's why we always bounce back form these kinds of disasters," Obama said.
Indeed, the challenges continue to mount.
While young Micah was being welcomed into the world, years of scientific research at NYU Hospital's Smilow building were lost to the ages.
When power was lost, many precious reagents -- special enzymes, antibodies, DNA strands -- generated by scientists and stored in special hospital equipment were likely destroyed, a researcher told
the Daily News.
Even more alarming, thousands of mice that are used by scientists for cancer research and other experiments, drowned during a flood. A source told the News that many of these mice are genetically modified for certain research and took years to produce. It will likely set back several scientists' work by years, the source said.
"This does not equate to a loss of life, but it is extremely disheartening to see years of research go down the drain," the source said.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NydnRss/~3/NqnnJw0dfxg/story01.htm
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