TYLER, Texas — When parents find out they're expecting a child, they never plan for the baby to be born weeks or even months early or that they'll be born with a life-threatening condition.
The NICU at Christus Mother Frances Hospital cares for East Texas families dealing with this every day. In this Merry Miracles, CBS19 introduces you to Luke Skinner, who spent his first Thanksgiving in the NICU before making it home right before Christmas 11 years ago.
Before being named a Children's Miracle Network Miracle Child in 2016, Luke Skinner was all of 2 pounds and 12 ounces. He was delivered nine weeks early after his mom, Katie, developed a life-threatening condition called HELLP syndrome.
"For me, it was kind of heart wrenching because while he was going through his troubles, Katie was having complications as well. And so me, as a dad, you want to be there for both of them. and I had to pick between the two," Luke's father Matthew Skinner said. "I think I slept somewhere in this hospital for the first week because they both were in ICU. He was in the NICU, Katie in the ICU."
And they had to leave Luke's older brother Nathan at home.
"We have never gone through this experience before," Matthew said.
For Luke's dad, it was overwhelming that he couldn't be everywhere -- all at once. He also had to deal with the shock of seeing his baby boy attached to all the machines in the neonatal intensive care unit at Christus Mother Frances Hospital, which is a Children's Miracle Network hospital.
"They're trying to explain it to you as they're doing it, but it's just a culture shock because you've never seen it. You don't know what's going on. He had a CPAP machine, a bilirubin light to help him with that. But this all seemed to be happening at the same time," Matthew said.
Even with all of the unknowns, the Skinners are thankful Christus opened their NICU back in 2008 with highly-trained neonatologists and nurses, among other healthcare staff. So they didn't have to commute back and forth to Dallas.
"Katie and I both, we've met some of the most amazing people here, and not just the doctors and nurses, but just other families too, that were going through the same thing. It's one of those things you don't really know," Matthew said. "You don't understand until you go through it, but I can't say enough about the people here. They're so good at what they do."
The amazing people he's talking about include those like neo-natal nurse practitioner Renee Gray.
"When I came here, we were like a 12, 13-bed little unit, and we didn't have all the specialties that we have now. And to watch it grow and it be here on certain days when it has blown up, as we talk about to 40 patients, 40 NICU babies that needed care on those days," Gray said. "Most of the time our average daily census is about 22 to 25 babies, and some of them needing the most, intense level of care that we can do, which is level three. And some of these babies are needing surgery. Other babies they're in what they call the feed and grow stage. And the support of the community is phenomenal here."
Luke was among those babies who benefited from the NICU, and he's come a long way since his days there.
"I've played basketball and since I've been taking my inhalers, I've been doing really good," Luke said.
Luke still deals with his asthma and regulating his blood pressure as a result of his premature birth, but it's not holding him back.
"Because the inhalers helped me breathe, and I just keep on taking my blood pressure pills, and it just helps me go throughout the day," Luke said.
Now, he's a young man of many talents from a football and basketball player to pickleball winner.
"In basketball, I made to the all-star team, and we played some tournaments of East Texas Hoops. It's like a tournament, and we've won all of them. And then we went to regionals, which is like, if you win regionals or get second, you go to nationals, and we won regionals," Luke said. "And then we went to nationals, which is far away, like Texas Tech and Levelland and we got third in the tournament."
To top it off -- he won a principal award as a student at Canton Elementary. And maybe one day,. he'll follow in his dad's footsteps as a trooper.
Luke and his family know firsthand how the community's support of the Children's Miracle Network can change lives. That's because they see it everyday in Luke, who is their merry miracle.
The Skinners are still very involved in CMN from telethons to 5K races, dance marathons and even pickleball to help raise funds.
The team at the Children's Miracle Network has been making miracles happen since 1987. That's translated into more than $16 million raised to support life-saving pediatric equipment and programs at Christus Mother Frances Hospital.
It takes thousands of donors each year to make Merry Miracles -- to provide health and hope to children and their families across East Texas.
"Being a small, vulnerable baby, they need a lot of special equipment, Gray said. "So over the years, we have come in with new equipment, like our Draeger isolette that allow humidity for these babies premature skin, because, as we all know skin protects us from infections. "The other specialties that we have, besides specialty equipment, we do certain types of ventilators.
:We do high frequency oscillation that gives you some of these babies breaths that are very, very gentle but very, very fast," Gray continued. "Up to 600 breaths per minute is what we can do on these babies, that prevents lung injury. We have pediatric surgery now here. So what's called a gastric button placed, or a g button placed."
Other items purchased by CMN include a sonogram to put in tiny needles for babies' peripherally inserted central catheter lines, transport isolettes, billirubin lights and radiant warmers for babies who come into the emergency room.
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