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Tiny lives: ‘The Legacy of
Dominique’
Story: TIM BOTOS,
Photos: JULIE VENNITTI Repository staff
Every year, about 400 babies born at Aultman Hospital are carried, in
life-stabilizing Isolettes, through a hidden set of double doors into the
neonatal intensive care unit. Here are the stories of the doctors, nurses,
parents and children who have come to know the unit well.
Sunday:
“Ready, set ... wait”
Monday:
“Professional Mommies on Duty”
Tuesday: “97 Days with Clara”
Today:
“The Legacy of Dominique”
Thursday: “Happy Babies, Troubled Tots”
CANTON
—— With a headstone lying flat in the trunk of her Honda Accord, Tiffany
Foxx and her two children drove up an asphalt path in Forest Hill
Cemetery. Would she cry? Or had time eroded the hurt? She had asked
herself these questions all day.
Her
husband, Kenneth, and two cemetery workers in a maintenance cart waited at
the grave site a couple of hundred yards away.
This
Wednesday afternoon in early May was gray and dreary, much like the day
when her family and friends gathered in this spot after a funeral in March
2004. There was no music or formal prayer, only the drone of vehicles
whizzing north and south on Cleveland Avenue NW.
One
worker moved a sheet of plywood marking the grave’s location. They lifted
the glossy stone from Tiffany Foxx’s trunk and laid it in the cart. They
rolled the stone to a patch of bare earth, and placed it with a thud in
front of a pine tree. Side by side, next to the grave, Kenneth and Tiffany
reflected on their lives in the past year. It felt like so much longer.
For a
minute, the Foxxes stared at the stone. A mother’s necklace, with tiny
shoes symbolizing each of her children, swung away from Tiffany’s chest as
she crouched close to the ground. The 26-year-old mother ran her fingers
back and forth on the stone, wiping away every speck of dirt.
The
name staring back: Dominique J. Foxx.
To this
day, the mention of that name to doctors and nurses in Aultman Hospital’s
neonatal intensive care unit elicits a smile or a sympathetic shake of the
head. She is a reminder of success and failure, of hoping for the best,
yet preparing for the worst.
For
Tiffany and Kenneth, her legacy is more complex. She was a precious gift.
The object of their fears. A wedge that splintered their marriage. And
finally, a blessing that made them stronger.
u
“Two
months,” said Anne Paliswat, director of the NICU, holding two fingers
into the air. “I say I’m never going to predict when your baby will go
home; not until they’ve been here for two months.”
It’s
her standard reply when parents ask how soon their baby will get to go
home. Too many things can go wrong. But after two months, Paliswat said,
they usually are safe.
Truth
is, most premature and sick babies who go to the unit for around-the-clock
care eventually do go home. That’s after they’ve grown, packed on pounds,
and can breathe and eat on their own.
Dominique, though, was a question mark from Day One.
Tiffany’s pregnancy was filled with problems that began when she spotted
blood in the fifth month. After running from doctor’s office to hospital
to home, she was in the hospital for good in January 2004 — and in labor.
This baby would be the Foxxes first together. They had bought a house in
Massillon and married two years earlier.
On Jan.
9, contractions tore at her insides. Her placenta was ripping from her
uterus, an anomaly called placental abruption. It’s bad news for baby and
mother. “I could feel the blood shooting out,” Tiffany recalled.
She
wondered if she was going to die. Was the baby going to die? After being
wheeled into an operating room, the last thing she remembered was a mask
over her mouth and nose.
“If it
was going to be a choice between my wife dying and the baby, I’d choose
the baby,” Kenneth said.
He
didn’t have to choose. Dominique Janae Foxx was born four months
premature. She was 12 inches long and just a smidgen over 1 pound, 3
ounces — about the size of a shoe. Most importantly, she was alive.
Dominique’s new home, her world, was the NICU. More precisely, it was
inside the first Isolette in Row C, an incubator in front of the nurse’s
station. Tiffany’s world also revolved around that Isolette, an enclosed
clear plastic crib, where her newborn would grow and gain weight.
While
her husband worked as an electrician at construction job sites, Tiffany
had a daytime routine. She got her other two kids, Taylor and Cameron, off
to Franklin School in the morning, then spent the day at the hospital with
her newborn. For much of her stay, a mechanical ventilator breathed for
Dominique, pushing air into her lungs, then pulling it out.
By
March, the Foxxes were changing Dominique’s diapers, and even holding her.
It’s called “kangaroo care,” because parents embrace the baby close to
their chest, like a kangaroo mom.
“Bonding is so important,” said Paliswat, the director of the unit.
Just as
important are the multicolored teddy bears and bunnies that parents put on
shelves surrounding the 21 Isolettes in the unit, and the family photos
they tape to the outside of the Isolettes.
On
March 9, Pam Schott, with 14 1/2 years experience as a nurse, had just
switched over to the NICU. She still was in orientation, technically
following unit nurse Amy Jamison. It was Dominique’s two-month birthday.
“All of
a sudden, she just desatted,” Schott said.
The
oxygen level in Dominique’s blood plummeted, triggering an incessant
“beep, beep, beep” sound on a monitor tracking her vital signs. Schott
“bagged” Dominique, manually squeezing air into her lungs.
Again,
Dominique stopped breathing.
It was
a full-blown “Code Pink,” the baby equivalent of a Code Blue. It happens
only a handful of times a year. Ten feet away, a red metal tool chest on
wheels, similar to an auto mechanic’s, was wheeled into action. Instead of
wrenches and sockets, it’s filled with needles, syringes, breathing-tube
kits, catheters, sodium bicarbonate, epinephren — tools and drugs to save
a dying baby.
The
cart is clearly marked with the words “neonatal emergency.” Most days, the
top of it serves as a catch-all coffee table for papers and coffee cups.
Nurses broke off plastic tabs that secured the drawers. A circle of nurses
and a nurse practitioner surrounded Dominique. On a clipboard, Schott
charted their life-saving efforts, detailing procedures and medications.
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Tiffany
always was at the hospital at this time. But on this day, she’d decided to
keep a dermatology appointment and run errands. After all, Dominique was
relatively stable. She already had made it through a transport to and
surgery at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland to close a
blood vessel in her heart, a relatively common procedure on preemies.
“I
looked around and saw all those babies up there who were in really bad
shape,” she said. “We started to realize Dominique was a lot better off
than we thought. She was a fighter.”
Members
of Shiloh Baptist Church in Massillon, the Foxxes put faith in God. The
French origin of the name Dominique is “of God.” The English origin of her
middle name Janae is “God has answered.”
Unable
to reach Tiffany by phone, nurses began calling her husband. Kenneth was
working on a house in North Canton when his cell phone rang. The word from
the NICU: Get to the hospital pronto.
He
dropped his tools and took off.
“I had
a gut feeling,” he said.
Dr.
Adel ElHennawy, a neonatologist, rushed into the unit and took over.
Dominique’s bronchial tubes were spasming, narrowing, making it difficult
for her to breathe. It had happened many times before, but this time she
wasn’t coming out of it. For a full 30 minutes, ElHennawy said they worked
on Dominique, probably longer than they normally would.
“It was
all so surreal,” Schott said.
Like
slow motion.
“We put
our heart and soul into that,” ElHennawy said.
At 9:17
a.m., Dominique died.
Once
inside the hospital, it seemed like a longer walk than normal for Kenneth
to get to the swinging electronic doors at the labor and delivery wing. A
left and a right turn later, and he was inside the NICU. At least a dozen
people encircled his baby daughter.
Kenneth’s brother, sister-in-law and father showed up moments later. He
doesn’t remember who told him Dominique was dead. “Oh my God, Tiff is
going to die,” he thought. Paliswat kept trying to reach Tiffany. About
that time, Tiffany walked into her home and played two messages on the
answering machine. She didn’t bother to listen to the entire messages:
“Honey,
it’s me; the hospital called ... “
She
flipped to the next message.
“Dominique had a bad day; we need you to get here ... “
She
headed to Aultman.
Tiffany
phoned her mom at work at Goodyear in Akron. She wasn’t at her desk. That
was odd. She always was there. On the drive east on Southway Street SW, a
drive she had made every day for the last two months, her mind raced.
“Lord, just help Dominique and bless her,” she prayed, as tears started.
When
she arrived at the hospital, her husband’s brother, Jim, was outside the
parking deck. He told her to give the car to a valet. “This isn’t good,”
she thought. “Why was her brother-in-law here?”
“I said
‘Jim, is she dying?’ ”
He
didn’t answer.
They
stopped at the lobby elevator. Impatient, they took the stairs. About
halfway up to the third floor, he told her Dominique was gone. When she
walked into the NICU, nurses were crying.
Inside
family room one, the same room where she pumped breast milk to nourish her
baby, her husband held Dominique’s lifeless body.
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The
NICU staff is trying to perfect its bereavement process; a committee of
nurses including Schott serve on the unit’s bereavement team. They are
trying to standardize how the unit handles death.
They’ve
established a checklist of 19 items, from asking parents if they want an
autopsy, to taking a close-up digital photo of the baby and making sure
every memento is collected on the spot. That includes an identical outfit
to what the baby was wearing, crib cards, sheets, blankets — all of which
will be included by nurses in a memory book.
At the
time, parents don’t always appreciate it, but usually they are thankful
for the keepsakes.
In the
family room, it was a blur. Tiffany didn’t notice the TV, refrigerator, or
nurses who came in. She just wanted to hold her baby tight. The Foxxes
bathed, groomed and dressed her. “She always had a lot of hair,” Tiffany
said. “And I always wanted to brush it.”
She
brushed Dominique’s dark hair, wiped lotion on her velvety skin. Several
times, she wanted to get up and leave. But she couldn’t do it. It was
selfish, she knew it, but she wouldn’t even allow Kenneth to hold their
baby.
“It’s
so important they have an opportunity to bond,” Paliswat said.
The
idea of bonding with a dead infant may seem morbid. But for many parents,
it’s the only opportunity they have to hold or kiss their baby. It’s truly
a now-or-never moment.
“It was
like every ‘Lifetime’ movie you ever saw,” said Kenneth.
Several
hours later, Tiffany hugged Dominique one last time.
The
loss hit the Foxxes when they walked into their home empty-handed. They
were never going back to the hospital. Dominique was never coming home.
For the first three months, Tiffany withdrew.
“Her
life revolved around Dominique,” Kenneth said. “But after a while, I was
thinking, ‘God just get over it already! It’s time to move on. You have
two other children and a husband!’”
She was
depressed.
He was
angry because she was depressed.
Tiffany
found support on the Internet, in the form of Web site support groups. In
the fall, about six months after Dominique’s death, she decided to make
sure her daughter’s death had meaning.
Tiffany
formed a support group called God’s Tiny Angels, which meets the third
Tuesday of every month at 6 p.m. at Shiloh church. The group’s mission is
to support families touched by SIDS, premature baby deaths, miscarriages
and infertility.
On the
Web site,
www.godstinyangels.org, Tiffany writes in a journal,
detailing her innermost thoughts about coping with the death. How she
resents women who are pregnant with healthy babies. How no one knows what
to say or when not to speak at all. A message board on the site has
attracted responses from Canada, North Carolina, Alabama, even South
Africa.
Now a
secretary at Shiloh, Tiffany does things she never imagined. She and her
husband walked for the March of Dimes at Canal Park in Akron. She wore a
T-shirt and necklace dedicated to Dominique.
She
phoned Massillon Mayor Francis Cicchinelli and went into his office,
getting him to officially proclaim Oct. 15 as Pregnancy and Infant Loss
Awareness Day in the city. She is planning a daylong event and walk at
Reservoir Park.
And she
finally placed the stone on Dominique’s grave. It had sat in her home
office since last year. But the weather and time this spring were right to
mark Dominique’s grave.
In
early May, she picked up her two children from school. Her husband left
work early. Her parents made a special trip to the cemetery. The stone was
placed with little fanfare. Usually, family members don’t even attend such
an occasion.
After
crouching to wipe dirt from the stone, Tiffany hugged Kenneth. He embraced
her as they stared at the grave. So much has happened in a year, they
thought. The Foxxes’ bond, which was weakened, is much tighter. They’ve
even decided to try for another baby.
“I just
wonder how our lives would be if she was here,” Kenneth said.
You can
reach Repository writer Tim Botos at (330) 580-8333 or e-mail:
tim.botos@cantonrep.com
Repository/Julie Vennitti
http://www.cantonrep.com
©2005 The Repository
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