Little boy, mom both survived rare delivery at CHI St. Francis | Grand Island Local News

Kyzer Hendrickson had a heck of a birthday party Wednesday, licking cupcake frosting and being the center of attention in a roomful of nurses.

The people in the room had a lot to with Kyzer’s healthy arrival in the world one year earlier.

The folks at CHI Health St. Francis brought Kyzer and his mother safely through an emergency C-section, necessitated by a uterine rupture.

Such ruptures don’t happen every often.

They are “oftentimes fatal for baby and then potentially for mom,” said Beth Deida, the OB educator at CHI St. Francis.

Kyzer and his mother, Nicole Dramse, returned to the hospital on his first birthday. He was fawned over by labor and delivery, NICU and surgery nurses.

Also looking on was Dr. Michael Ryskin, who delivered him.

Because of HIPA rules, Ryskin could not confirm that Dramse suffered a uterine rupture. But she “acutely developed a very severe complication of pregnancy that threatened her life and the life of the baby,” he said.

He has seen such a condition only two or three times in his 40 years of practicing medicine.

Dramse, who was 38 weeks pregnant, awoke with a lot of pain on May 25, 2021.

She went to her doctor’s office in Grand Island, where the midwife could tell something was wrong.

The midwife called CHI St. Francis.

Deida took the call. She was just finishing up a unit meeting with several staff members who attended Wednesday’s birthday party.

The midwife told Deida that the mother had had a previous C-section, she was having severe abdominal pain and they were struggling to get a good heart rate on the baby.

Just from the midwife’s clinical assessment, Deida knew that it was a uterine rupture.

“And so I activated our team right away. Before the patient even hit the door, we had the surgery team up here, we had anesthesia, we had our two CHI Health OB/GYNs en route. And the patient went straight from her wheelchair into the OR. We had the baby out in 16 minutes, from door to delivery.”

When Dramse arrived, there was still an opportunity for the medical team to save the day. “And we took it,” Ryskin said.

“I’m grateful to the powers above us who left that door open for us. We just were there to do what we’re supposed to do, and we did it,” Ryskin said.

He was thrilled to see the mom and baby healthy and happy a year later. It’s “very rare to have this kind of a problem and to end this well,” Ryskin said.

How long was Dramse conscious during the ordeal?

She remembers entering “the operating room and seeing all the people. And then I was gone.”

After Kyzer was born at 10:59 a.m., he was flown to Children’s Hospital in Omaha, where he stayed for a week.

Doctors wanted Dramse to stay at St. Francis for a week. But after two nights, they succumbed to her pleas to release her to see her baby.

Medical personnel wanted to be sure she was OK after her internal bleeding. Once they were sure she was safe, “they let me go,” she said.

“We’re just so thankful for the whole team at St. Francis,” Dramse said.

That day was certainly not planned, she noted. “We were thankful that they were there, and ready to help in a true emergency,” she said.

How does Dramse feel now?

“Great. Like nothing ever happened,” she said.

Dramse and Matt Hendrickson are the parents of three children.

Their other sons are Karston, 12, and Mason, 11. She had a C-section with Mason.

Kyzer, who had the nurses in the palm of his hand Wednesday, doesn’t cry very often. “He’s the most chill baby,” his mom said.

Deida was glad to see all the work that health care workers do pay off.

“The teamwork was just incredible that day,” Deida said. “For all of us to be a part of something so incredible was so rewarding, and then a year later to see that the work that we did, the drills that we do, the teamwork that we have” leads to “outcomes like this — that we have a perfectly healthy 1-year-old, it’s incredible.”

Nurses who work in labor and delivery “get to be a part of the miracle of life, of God’s gift,” Deida said.

“We get to make moms every day,” she said. The experience is special.

“Our goal is for every mom to go home with a healthy baby,” Deida said.

Dramse’s story was “just incredible” because “the outcome could have been so much worse,” Deida said.

“And we’re thankful that God was there with us that day and he provided everyone who needed to be there to get great outcomes for Mom and baby,” Deida said.

“I love our profession,” Deida said. “I love our team, and there’s no possible way that we could have had the outcome without the team that we have, the experience that we have and the dedication of our staff to these great outcomes.”

Dramse, meanwhile, is one happy mom.

“Yes, very thankful,” she said.

jeff.bahr@theindependent.com