Eleanor Ruth McGee was just 24 days old when she was airlifted to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s Egleston Hospital. The preemie was struggling to breathe, turning blue. She had caught a virus that’s been spreading in Georgia and across the country and filling hospitals: respiratory syncytial, or RSV, which is often most severe among very young children and older adults.
The baby was born prematurely at 35 weeks’ gestation and spent the first two weeks of her life in a neonatal intensive care unit. Then, the night her parents, Megan and Tyler finally brought their baby home, their 3-year-old son, Tate, spiked a fever.
“We took him to the doctor to get checked out because obviously, we didn’t want her getting sick,” Megan McGee said.
Tate tested negative for RSV, but McGee said, “I assume he had a false negative for RSV because he’s the only sick person she was around,” McGee said.
Five days later, Eleanor Ruth – called “Ella” by her mom – started showing symptoms of illness. It started with a little congestion and a cough. On Nov. 22, she wouldn’t wake up.
“She was pale, and then she started turning blue around the mouth,” Megan McGee said
Megan McGee knew something was very wrong. Her daughter was critically sick and needed oxygen. Megan McGee rushed her to a nearby urgent care center in Canton.
There, a quick test showed Eleanor Ruth had a staggeringly low oxygen saturation level of 52 - a medical emergency. Her daughter was surrounded by a team of people working frantically to keep her alive.
All Megan McGee could do was watch from the sidelines.
“It was almost like an out-of-body experience for me. All I could do is stand there and watch. I couldn’t help in any way … I was frozen,” Megan McGee said.
With the situation so critical, Eleanor Ruth’s grandparents were allowed in the room. Medical personnel placed a bag mask over her mouth and nose, providing immediate ventilation for the baby as she was prepared for an airlift to Children’s Egleston Hospital in Atlanta.
Eleanor Ruth’s story is emblematic of a state-wide surge in respiratory infections hitting Georgia families and hospitals. Nationally, as of Dec. 10, the percentage of people visiting their doctors for respiratory illness symptoms including fever, cough and sore throat, which can be indicative of RSV, flu or COVID-19, was 6.58%, higher than it was at the same time last year at 2.72%. Georgia was at 5.33%, 974 of those visits being among children zero to four years old.
Megan McGee couldn’t join her daughter on the flight, so her husband Tyler — who was closer to Egleston — drove to meet the baby, while the rest of the family caught up from the urgent care center. At the hospital, Eleanor was rushed into the intensive care unit, where was sedated and intubated.
The first night felt like hell to Eleanor’s mother.
“I was just terrified. I was almost convinced I was going to lose her,” she said.
Baby Eleanor Ruth was hypothermic, her blood pressure was dropping and her heart was racing. Instead of a normal IV line, the infant needed an arterial line – a tiny catheter inserted into an artery – for better monitoring of her blood pressure and taking blood samples for labs. Installation of the line, a tedious effort on a tiny artery, took a team of eight people.
Megan McGee watched them work late into the night from a small, green pullout couch meant for parents to sleep on – if they could.
“I could hear them talking about how hard it was to place an arterial line because she’s so tiny,” McGee said. “They said it was ‘like getting a line through a strand of hair’.”
“Don’t mess that one up,” Megan McGee recalled the doctor saying. “Because I can’t promise I can do it again.”
Eleanor Ruth was monitored by a constant stream of nurses and respiratory therapists. “She basically looked lifeless,” her mother said. “All you could see was her chest moving.”
The mother spent every moment she could by her baby’s side, but when the baby needed a lumbar puncture to check her spinal fluid for possibly other infections, her parents had to go to the waiting room. There, it was quiet — save for the news broadcast on a waiting room television. The news that night included a report on infants dying of RSV.
“I almost screamed at my family to turn the dang TV off,” Megan McGee said.
As the days passed, Megan McGee would pray over Eleanor Ruth, holding the baby’s hand and rubbing her head, telling her she would get better and would come home to her brother again. “It’s like I was trying to convince myself of that as well,” she said.
The doctors tried to extubate Eleanor Ruth on Nov. 29, but their first attempt failed and she was re-intubated the next day. Altogether, she spent 14 days in the PICU, until she was successfully extubated on Dec. 6. She was then moved to the hospital’s general pediatric unit, where she was monitored until her doctors felt she was stable enough to return home.
Credit: Megan McGee
Credit: Megan McGee
When the hospital gave Eleanor Ruth a discharge date of Saturday, Dec. 10, Megan McGee counted the hours and paced the hospital room before she and her baby stepped outside for the first time in 18 days.
About an hour and a half later, the family was reunited at the McGees’ Canton home. “It was the biggest sigh of relief,” Megan McGee said. “The happiest little reunion.”
So far, Eleanor Ruth has had a smooth recovery, gaining weight and getting a good report at a follow-up doctor’s appointment. Her mother reports the baby is thriving on a steady diet of breast milk.
Tate is adjusting to being an older brother, thrilled to be able to finally spend time with his sister. While Eleanor Ruth is still too small to play with, Tate lets her hold his toy monster trucks and talks to her about dinosaurs.
Megan McGee is relieved, but she worries – “If [Eleanor Ruth] gets a sniffle at all I’m going to run her to the doctor,” she said. “I couldn’t believe how fast it happened … On Monday I didn’t expect to be life-flighting my daughter on Tuesday.”
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