Olivia Ramsbottom is alive today thanks to the work of STARS.
“A moment I never want to re-live.”
This is how Naomi Ramsbottom felt when just a few hours after giving birth to her daughter, Olivia, she watched as the newborn was transported by STARS helicopter air ambulance to Calgary’s Foothills Medical Centre because she was born with under-developed lungs, and had begun to turn blue.
“When she came out she was kind of grunting and the staff, nurses and doctors, were monitoring her. Throughout the night, she started to turn blue and that was when they realized she wasn’t breathing effectively so STARS was called and she was incubated,” Ramsbottom recalled. “Her lungs hadn’t developed enough so she was given medication to develop her lungs. Then after things started to look like she was going to improve, she got hit with an infection.” Ramsbottom said, to this day they still don’t know what the infection was.
After she started getting better from the infection, Ramsbottom said, “she started having all these seizures and so they sent her for an MRI and they came back to us and said ‘your daughter has suffered a stroke.’”
Ramsbottom and her husband Rob were devastated. When the first diagnoses came back, the doctor looked at the couple and told them "She will probably never dance, never write or colour, or play the piano - it had affected those areas of the brain. It was devastating.” Ramsbottom continued to say that over time though, Olivia has made a remarkable recovery. “She dances, she writes and she colours. She is undergoing studies at the neurology unit at the children’s hospital (they are) trying to figure out how this little girl recovered so miraculously from this stroke and others don’t.”
Ramsbottom said it was mind-boggling to have a doctor say their daughter would never do those things when she was just an infant. “I remember just looking at him. I was in shock.”
She said it was hard to believe they could make that conclusion so early when they really didn’t know what she could do yet. “I was that stubborn person who (said) this can’t be happening.”
She said her husband had the same reaction. They asked what things they could do, considering Olivia was young and her brain was still growing. “They talked about physiotherapy, so we started on that journey. We said, you know what, whatever happens, happens and we aren’t going to give up. If she can never do it then that’s fine - but let's try.”
Ramsbottom said Olivia is now five, and this year was given her discharge from the neurology unit after the staff announced she was fully rehabilitated from her stroke.
“She will never be fully recovered because that part of her brain will always be damaged, but as far as they are concerned she’s made a full recovery.”
After finding out this news, the family wanted to thank everybody for what they did for Olivia.
To do this, Ramsbottom said she sent an e-mail to STARS to thank them for everything they had done. In the e-mail, Ramsbottom said, she talked about the paramedic who comforted her when she was sitting on the floor crying because she didn’t know what was happening.
“They sent me an e-mail back and said they have a program where the STARS patients can come back and meet the crew that flew them out,” she continued.
So that is what they did. “We went to the STARS hanger and we got to meet everybody that was involved in Olivia’s flight, and got to say thank you. They said it was really rewarding for the pilots and staff to actually see the patients they help rescue."
"Then (later), they emailed us and said they would like to feature Olivia in their calendar, and we said okay - sure.”
Ramsbottom said Olivia is featured for the month of November in the 2015 STARS calendar.
She said an ambulance could take quite a while to get to a critically ill patient or a victim of a crash if it was arriving by road, but that STARS could be there quickly.
“I am a nurse myself and generally,when you have a critically ill patient and you hear STARS is coming, you have a little bit of relief because you know help is on the way.”
Ramsbottom said to be on the other end of that was very scary. “I knew she was very sick, and I wasn’t sure whether she was going to live or not.” She said in the case of Olivia, STARS was able to transport the rescue team to Drumheller Health Centre and they were able to stabilize her and fly her to Foothills Hospital. This meant that Olivia would be in Calgary and the family lives in Drumheller.
Ramsbottom said thankfully, extended family was there to help both with accommodations in Calgary so that Ramsbottom and her husband could be with Olivia, and also to care for the family’s other four children at home in Drumheller.
She also said the staff at Drumheller Health Centre kept in touch during the time Olivia was in Calgary. “The staff at the hospital here cooked meals for us and kept in touch and made sure everything was okay. It was really awesome.”
Ramsbottom said STARS will be doing a door-to-door calendar blitz in Drumheller selling the 2015 STARS calendar, but if anyone would like to purchase a calendar for $30 and support STARS before the blitz, they can call 1-877-778-8288 or by visit www.starscalendar.ca. Because STARS is a non-profit charitable organization, Ramsbottom said they rely on the fundraising to keep the program going.
“STARS is a great advantage to communities in rural Alberta, especially because they provide you with the urgent care needed to help people.”
