Andrea and Wyatt Artz had just five minutes of skin-to-skin contact with their daughter Catherine before she needed emergency care.
She was born at Sanford Health partner hospital Ortonville Area Health Services in Ortonville, Minnesota. Andrea’s pregnancy and delivery were completely normal, with no hiccups.
Oxygen levels dangerously low
Five minutes after Catherine’s birth, everything changed.
“Her oxygen saturation levels were abnormally low,” said Andrea.
Providers worked tirelessly to raise her oxygen levels.
“They put her on an oxygen mask and tried to get her oxygen levels up, and they just wouldn’t go up. They kept raising the oxygen level and it wasn’t helping,” said Wyatt.
“The anesthesiologist actually held up the oxygen mask to her all night,” added Andrea.
Needing a higher level of care
Catherine would need a higher level of care, but there was one problem: she was born during a blizzard.
“Sioux Falls said we can’t get to you. They called Fargo, and from my understanding Fargo tried and they made it about halfway and they had to turn back,” Wyatt added.
The storm finally cleared. Hours later, Catherine was flown to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Upon arrival, William Waltz, M.D., a pediatric cardiologist at Sanford Children’s Hospital in Sioux Falls, assessed and performed an echocardiogram to get a better look at Catherine’s heart.
The echocardiogram showed that the right side of her heart was underdeveloped, and the pressure in her lungs and right side of her heart were abnormally high.
“The blood comes back from the body to the right atrium, and it dumps it into the right ventricle which pumps it out to the lungs. It comes back to the heart through the left atrium, with oxygen, dumps into the left ventricle and pumps it out to the body,” Dr. Waltz explained while looking at Catherine’s echocardiogram.
“In her case, her right atrium is really not happy because of the high pressure it’s under. The right ventricle should be same size as the left ventricle, and it’s really underdeveloped and really stiff, under high pressure. This is not a happy heart,” he continued.
Dr. Waltz diagnosed her with pulmonary hypertension.
ECMO machine gives her heart a break
Her oxygen kept falling.
“She was on 100% oxygen and on like 30 different medications and nothing was working,” said Andrea.
Catherine’s providers decided to put her on an ECMO, or extra corporeal membrane oxygenation, machine. An ECMO machine temporarily takes over the duties for a patient’s heart and lungs, allowing the heart and lungs to rest and heal.
The ECMO machine travels blood outside a patient’s body, inserting oxygen and removing carbon dioxide from the blood, before returning the blood into the body.
Jody Huber, M.D., is a pediatric intensivist and the medical director of the pediatric intensive care unit at Sanford Children’s Hospital. She said an ECMO treatment comes with risk, mainly due to the need to thin a patient’s blood.
“Especially with our neonates, they could develop a bleed in their head. That’s the most worrisome thing that we have. So, once you get on ECMO, we like to do our best to get them off ECMO,” she explained.
Watch: Dr. Huber explains and demonstrates how an ECMO machine works.
Catherine needed to be on the ECMO machine for 13 days.
“We put someone on ECMO when we’re confident that if we don’t, they’re going to die,” said Dr. Waltz.
Signs of improvement
Throughout everything, Wyatt and Andrea never lost their faith.
“A priest came and baptized her. Later she was off ECMO and was not doing very good. A priest came again and he distributed communion to us, and he laid the host on her and prayed over her.
“It wasn’t immediate, but it was about the same day, where her (oxygen) numbers just slowly started to rise again,” recalled Wyatt.
Dr. Waltz said it’s a miracle Catherine survived.
“When Mom and Dad are praying for their baby, God listens,” he said.
Catherine is back home now with her family in Gann Valley, South Dakota, and playing with her two big sisters every single day.
She comes back for regular check-ups every six months, but she’s otherwise happy and healthy.
Learn more
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Posted In Children's, Emergency Medicine, Heart, Sioux Falls, Specialty Care
