Friday, September 12, 2008

Hurricane Watch: Tiny Texans Airlifted Ahead of Ike

From the Houston Chronicle:

At Galveston's airport this afternoon, dozens of helicopter and airplane crew members were waiting to evacuate sick and premature babies who couldn't travel by bus or ambulance from the University of Texas Medical Branch.

"It's kind of exciting, but it is hectic," said Renae Taggart, a Teddy Bear Transport nurse from Fort Worth's Cook Children's Medical Center, who was coordinating much of the work.

Intensive care ambulances that had picked up the fragile infants at UTMB rolled onto the airport apron and handed the babies off to crews who staff airborne intensive care units.

Galveston Emergency Medical Service crews and units from Texas Children's Hospital's "Kangaroo Crew" were among the dozens of ambulances working on the evacuation.

Early on, workers loaded two premature babies and one baby in an incubator called an Isolette on each of two aircraft....

...Premature babies who were brought to the airport in car seats by ambulance were "feeder-growers," Taggart said.

"They're just kind of fattening up, just waiting to get big enough to go home," she said as she moved away from a revving jet ambulance....MORE

HT: StormWire

Morgan - cowboy hat.jpg

From The Desnoyers Denník

Every Texas baby needs a cowboy hat.
(And some hyper-professional medical folks who call themselves
the "Kangaroo Crew' and "Teddy Bear Transport")