The Address Of Choice
For The Lifestyle You Choose:
Franklin Club
The Apartments At
Franklin Club
• One or two bedroom
full apartments
• Activities included
• Scheduled transportation
included
• Exercise/card/game rooms
• Meals optional
• Housekeeping optional
u
aosuea
• One or two bedroom
full apartments
• Meals
• Housekeeping
• Personal care assistance
• Medication reminders
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HOPE page 69
bies. That, too, was a false alarm.
"It was like night after night
there was something else," Mrs.
Fingeroot said.
Natalie gained weight slowly.
In an effort to make her life as
normal as possible, her parents
wanted to buy her clothing. They
were unable to find anything to
fit such a tiny body until they
stumbled on the doll Aisle in Toys
R Us. They bought up a selection
of clothes to fit 12-14-inch dolls.
"Still she swam in those
clothes. They fit her in length but
the dolls were fatter," Mr. Finge-
root said.
Every day, Laura Fingeroot
made the trek from her home to
the Detroit hospital and then
spent 10-12 hours holding her tiny
daughter. Natalie was good dur-
ing these times, rarely crying and
seemingly happy to be with her
mother.
`The nurses would tell me that
she would cry at night," she said.
"But she never cried for me."
What was perhaps most dis-
turbing to Mrs. Fingeroot was not
the number of wires coming from
her datighter but rather the num-
Bridgepointe At
Franklin Club
<
ber of parents visiting the nurs-
ery. Oftentimes, she would notice
an infant who never had a visitor. c--\
"When scary things happen,
people step away," Mrs. Fingeroot
said.
Natalie, however, thrived, more
than doubling her birth weight in
two months. On the day she went
home, she tipped the scales at 4
pounds 4 ounces.
Since then, Natalie has gained
111 pounds and now stands at 5-
feet- 1-inch tall.
"I grew up, but I am still one of
the smallest kids in my class," she
said.
She is an eighth-grader at
Norup Middle School in north
Oak Park and lives with her par-
ents; her two older brothers,
Bryan and Danny; two dogs,
Clancy and Snoopy; a tarantula
and a tank of fish.
Away from her school studies,
Natalie has a rabid interest in the
Detroit Red Wings and the young
musicians in the rock group Sil-
ver Chair. She hopes one day to
learn how to play the bass guitar
and start an all-girl rock group of
her own. ❑
The Ones Who Care
For nearly two decades, Franklin Club
has offered the atmosphere, amenities and value
people look for in a full service adult community.
Nurses in the NICU help the smallest human beings
despite the job stress.
JILL DAVIDSON SKLAR STAFF WRITER
Let us welcome you to the Club
Call (810) 353-2810
L
inda Jenkins sometimes
goes home from work and
cries. A registered nurse in
the neonatal intensive care
unit (NICU) at Sinai Hospital in
Detroit, her job is to care for some
of the tiniest human beings on
this planet.
Like the others who work with
these little ones, she is tough. Day
in and day out, she coaxes the ba-
bies to eat, changes their preemie
diapers and keeps an eye on their
monitors. When the babies forget
to breathe, as children this small
do at times, she tickles their feet
to remind them.
•
FRANKLIN CLUB
Where You Choose Your Lifestyle
28310 Franklin Road • Southfield, MI 48034
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The babies themselves are
fighters. They have to be with
such odds stacked against them.
But death is inevitable for some —\
of Ms. Jenkins' patients. And that
is when she cries.
"It is very stressful some days,"
she said. "You spend hours and
hours trying to save a baby. When
you leave, you leave it in the
Lord's hands."
Ms. Jenkins is just one of the
nurses who works in the NICU at
Sinai.
In a unit in which hundreds of
infants pass through in a given
year, the workers face the chal-
lenge of caring for not only
the smallest but also some
of the sickest children.
Here is where the children
born to a diabetic mother
may stay for a short time,
where children with con-
genital abnormalities may
spend their last days,
where children with holes
in their hearts may come
for help, where children of
multiple births may take
two or more incubators.
Although there are
many diagnoses responsi-
ble for landing a child in
the NICU, there only
seems to be one reason
that keeps the nurses
Christine Lee holds her two-
day-old son, Justin, in Sinai's
neonatal intensive care unit.