Unborn Baby Olivia has rallied an army of support

    Melanie Deck Williams, a registered nurse who specializes in labor and delivery, didn’t give it much thought when she was asked in July to schedule a follow-up ultrasound of her unborn child.
    “We had gone in just to find out if it was a boy or a girl,” Williams said, referring to the ultrasound appointment with her husband Brett. “When we went in, they kind of saw something that might be abnormal, but they didn’t want to alarm me.”
    Pregnant with her third child – a girl – Williams, 28, went back a few days later, and she was so nonchalant about the procedure that Brett didn’t come with her because he had to work.
    When the doctor did the second ultrasound, it was then that Melanie’s nursing instincts began to kick in. The doctor was too methodical, too deliberate and too quiet.
    “He did the ultrasound for a very long time,” Melanie said. “At the end, he said, ‘I’m going to tell it like it is.’ He laid it all out there.”
    The diagnosis was HLHS, medical shorthand for hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a rare condition in which the left side of the heart is severely underdeveloped and does not pump oxygenated blood properly throughout the body.
    The condition is 100 percent fatal if not treated with a series of three, extremely delicate surgeries – the first as early as five days after birth, the second at six months when the baby’s lungs are developed and the third when the child is 3 to 5 years old. The surgeries essentially create a new blood flow within the heart to compensate, in a limited way, for the missing part of the heart.  
    For years, Melanie had been the comforting shoulder, the person who could be drafted to calm down a woman whose pain from a prolonged delivery was making her delirious. She had a special mother’s touch.
    “Whenever there is somebody who is really hurting, the other nurses will tell me, ‘We need you in there,’” Melanie said. “That’s what I enjoy most about nursing.”
    Now, she was on the other side of the bed.
    “When you’re in the medical profession and the doctor walks in and tells the patient the worst news, I’m there to try to support the patient,” she said. “But when you’re the one getting the news, the thought was, ‘I need to hold this together.’ Some days I can’t even talk about it.”
    These are challenging times for the Williams’ family, but their faith community is rallying in support. St. Clement of Rome Parish, where Nathan, 7, and Delilah, 3, attend school, has thrown its support behind a fund-raiser to begin to defray some of the astronomical costs involved with baby Olivia’s upcoming surgeries.
    Olivia is due Nov. 7, and Melanie will travel in advance to Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, which does more of these surgeries than any other in the U.S. Although the family is covered by basic health insurance, there are extra charges for out-of-network care, and Olivia’s oxygen levels and weight will have to be monitored virtually around the clock for the first six to eight months. Then there are the prescriptions and the travel and room costs.
    The first fund-raiser, “Heart 2 Heart for Olivia,” was scheduled for the evening of Sept. 9 at Generations Hall. But for those who couldn’t make it, donations to the Baby Olivia Williams Fund can be made at any Whitney Bank location or at [email protected].
    Melanie said what keeps her going is the one-hour respite at St. Clement of Rome Church each Sunday for Mass.
    “I look over at my kids and realize just how blessed I am,” she said. “I’m at peace. I know that everything’s going to be OK. I’ve been given this challenge for a reason, and I have to treasure it. Maybe God is pushing me out of my comfort zone so that I can make a difference in someone else’s life.”
    She is treasuring the offers of help to prepare meals for her family while she is in Philadelphia. The school is doing a Baby Olivia “heart day” when student bands play music and everyone wears red for the day.
    “Some of the kids in Nathan’s class sent in all the money from their piggybanks,” Melanie said. “One of the kids went door-to-door  and handed out flyers. Some people have offered to pick up Nathan from school so he can do sports so his life remains as normal as possible.”
    “I always prided myself on taking care of myself,” Melanie said. “Me being willing to accept these things from people – that’s what I have to do right now. It’s helped me grow as a person. I’ve grown more in the last eight weeks than I ever would have imagined.”
    So has Olivia.
    Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].