MacMan to the Rescue
Friday the 13th came on Friday this month. I was all set to write about Open Transport, or maybe do my why the Mac isn't dead column, or simply clean out my mailbox of all the unanswered questions I have, and answer them.
That all changed 12 days ago, as I write this.
My wife's water broke.
Two months early.
The morning of Friday the 13th.
If this starts to sound like Paul's excellent column, I know he'll forgive me, I hope you will too.
I drove my wife to the hospital. We arrived at around 6:30 AM. They immediately got here into a bed, attached the fetal heart and contraction monitors, and gave her a shot to stop the contractions, and another to help the baby's lungs. Then, another shot of the same steroid twelve hours later.
By this time, her contractions had started again. Without going into gory details of incompetent on-call doctors and neo-natal nurses with the bedside manner of your average sea-slug, Scott James Shields was born at 7:18 AM, the morning of the 14th. Weighing in at 4 pounds 4 ounces, and measuring 18 inches. They rushed him up to NICU, (ok, so they walked fast), and informed me that his lungs were fully developed, and his color was good. They lied.
The next day, they put him on a respirator, and under a light.
The day after, they took him off the respirator, and put him on a ventilator. It seems that the original doctor had made a mistake, and there were tiny pin-prick holes in Scott's lungs, and they were collapsed.
They reinflated.
To make a long story short, which is almost too late at this point, Scott is breathing on his own now, and he's starting to nurse. We'll get to take him home when his weight gets up, and his color looks good, and he can eat consistently on his own.
Now, I'm not doing anything grandiose like telling you that I may never write another column again, quite the contrary.
The only way that I'll be able to function, is with your prayers and well wishes at the usual e-mail address. And if you wanna send a Mac question, that'll be ok, too.
This column should return to normal next month. Stay tuned.
| Mike Shields is a perspiring Screen Writer who needs $575,000 to produce his recently finished screenplay. He can be reached at Mshields@ccgate.hac.com or ATPMOPed@aol.com. Or, if you just have a Mac question, that's ok, too. | ![[apple graphic]](../images/apple.gif){kind=small} |
Also in This Series
- MacMan to the Rescue · August 1997
- MacMan to the Rescue · July 1997
- MacMan to the Rescue · June 1997
- MacMan to the Rescue · May 1997
- MacMan to the Rescue · April 1997
- MacMan to the Rescue · March 1997
- Anniversaries · February 1997
- MacMan to the Rescue · January 1997
- MacMan to the Rescue · December 1996
- Complete Archive
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