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Girl who fell four stories is doing fine
BY HUGO GARCIA AND JOSE GONZALEZ
RIVAS
(Taken from Juventud Rebelde
newspaper)
• MATANZAS.— Mélani Mantilla
Gómez was born twice in just 11 months of life. This
little girl from the city of Cárdenas in Matanzas
province accidentally fell from the balcony of a
fourth-floor apartment building, approximately 12
meters high — and she’s alive and well!
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Melani, 11 months old,
and her mother. |
While she is still receiving
medical assistance at the provincial pediatric
hospital in Matanzas, east of Havana, where she was
admitted on January 11, Melanie’s health is evolving
well. The hospital workers have dubbed her “Rubber
Girl.”
Her mother Yaiteh Gómez,
described to us — still with a faint trace of fear
in her eyes — how she went mute and didn’t react
after her baby fell into the yard outside the
building.
Eloy and William, two neighbors
who were doing voluntary work, were also surprised
by the dull sound of something hitting the ground,
and a few seconds later they were running toward a
car with her in their arms to take her to a small
hospital nearby.
“It all happened very fast,”
Yaiteh said, recalling how the personnel in the
three health centers where they took Mélani worked
quickly and very professionally.
When they picked her up, they
took her to a small hospital in the Dos de Diciembre
neighborhood, and from there to the Cárdenas City
Hospital; then they transferred her to the city of
Matanzas in an ambulance equipped with advanced
life-support systems and a specialized doctor and
nurse, along with all available resources.
“When she arrived, she took a
turn for the worse; that is normal with this type of
trauma, but then she reacted well,” commented Dr.
Reynold García Montes de Oca, a first-grade
specialist in intensive and emergency medicine, who
took charge of Mélani’s case in the hospital’s
intensive care unit.
He says that it was vital that
there was a small hospital near the accident, and
that it had a sophisticated ambulance, because the
trip took about 35 minutes, and was not too long.
Everything was prepared. From
Cárdenas, they called to say a little girl had
fallen four stories, and that she was being sent to
Matanzas. “When she arrived she was having a very
hard time breathing and her movements were slow,”
Montes de Oca explained.
“We decided to intubate her. She
was placed on a respirator, sedated and the
necessary parameters were achieved to maintain her
appropriately,” the specialist said, noting that all
efforts were made to give rapid attention to the
baby.
“A neurosurgeon was sent for,
along with a surgeon, radiologist, orthopedist,
intensive-care experts and nurses...
“In the baby’s case, we used a
cutting-edge machine for her intubation that the
hospital received,” he remarked.
No lesions requiring surgery were
noted, and she remained on the respirator for more
than 36 hours. “An ultrasound was taken, and the
next day, she was taken to the capital for a CT
scan, which showed that she had a small hemorrhage,
but one that did not require surgery.”
“Neurologically speaking, the
baby evolved well and it was possible to remove her
from the respirator,” Montes de Oca said.
“It was either pure chance or a
miracle that she did not have any lesions after that
fall from a fourth-story floor. Children at that age
are very pliable; we have had two similar cases, and
they haven’t had any problems, even though they are
very fragile. If she had been an adult, it could
have killed her.”
He said other factors in Mélani’s
case were her weight, her soft tissue and her bones,
which are still not hard.
She will grow up and perhaps when
she is an adult, she won’t be able to believe her
own story. To be born twice in just 11 months of
life must be a record. She came into the world on
February 10, 2006, and, her family says, from now on
her birthday will be celebrated twice over.
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