{"id":226434,"date":"2020-06-29T14:56:27","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T19:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=226434"},"modified":"2020-06-29T09:27:16","modified_gmt":"2020-06-29T14:27:16","slug":"determined-doctors-covid-19-healthy-son-coma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/determined-doctors-covid-19-healthy-son-coma\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanks to determined doctors, mom with COVID-19 gave birth to healthy son while in medically-induced coma"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As some areas of the country begin to see an increase in cases of COVID-19, some doctors are ignoring people they deem unworthy of life. Others are fighting tooth and nail to save everyone they can — even preborn children. The Wall Street Journal<\/a> featured Adriana Rice-Leiva’s battle with the coronavirus, and Dr. Tracey Dechert’s successful fight to save her.<\/p>\n

Rice-Leiva was just 31 when she contracted COVID-19. She was also nearly eight months pregnant. As the virus raged through her body, she was placed into a medically induced coma, breathing through a ventilator, so doctors could save not only Rice-Leiva, but her preborn child.<\/p>\n

Dechert, according to the Wall Street Journal, would check on her as she made rounds, and made a promise to herself. \u201cShe is going to make it, damn it,\u201d Dechert said. \u201cWe\u2019ve gotta get her through this.\u201d Rice-Leiva had only gone out to go grocery shopping, and her family\u2014her husband, Bryan, and a 63-year-old aunt\u2014took precautions the best they could. But in April, she came down with a fever, struggled to breathe, and stopped feeling her baby move. She was quickly admitted at Boston Medical Center, one of the first patients there to catch the virus.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Parents diagnosed with COVID-19 finally meet premature twins after 20 days of quarantine<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

COVID-19 patients had filled the ICU, and many of the medical staff pinned their hopes that Rice-Leiva would recover. “When you would find one where there was hope, you\u2019d be holding on to it for dear life,” Dechert explained. Dechert, as a trauma surgeon and the ICU director, is no stranger to difficult circumstances\u2014and she was determined to save Rice-Leiva. Originally, it seemed Rice-Leiva had turned a corner, and was even sent home. But then her symptoms returned after just two days, and she got worse. When all of their treatments didn’t work, Rice-Leiva finally agreed to go on a ventilator and into the medically-induced coma, something she had been dreading.<\/p>\n