Miracles in Motion: Powie
(1/3) “We were on our way to have some family pictures made when Powie was 2 weeks old. I heard her sister’s tiny voice from the backseat of the car say, ‘Mommy, the baby is blue.’ I looked back and it looked like Powie wasn’t breathing. We pulled over and I grabbed her, and she really wasn’t breathing. My husband called 911, and I couldn’t get her to breathe. I was a first responder, so I did a sternum rub but still couldn’t get her to breathe. There was nothing in her airway; she wasn’t choking. So I started performing mouth to mouth. Performing mouth to mouth on your child is something no parent ever wants to do, and it is a moment I will never forget.
When the ambulance got there, the paramedics worked with her and finally got her to start breathing again. They took her to the hospital, and they ran all kinds of tests. That’s when we first knew that something was really wrong with her. That’s when we first heard the words ‘Mitochondrial Disease’.” – Kristen, mom to Powie, CMN Hospitals Ambassador
(2/3) “During one of the times when Powie was really sick and had been in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) for about a week at UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital, a new doctor came in to talk to us. He was telling us all these medical terms about everything that was going wrong in Powie’s body. He was feeling her liver and showing us how enlarged it was. He was telling us that it wasn’t processing sugars right. And he was explaining all the changes we were having to make in her care.
But then he turned around and instantly switched gears. He looked at us and said, ‘I have been treating kids like Powie for 30 years, and most of them are graduating from high school and graduating from college and getting married.” And then he said, ‘Have hope. Have hope for her.’
In that moment, he gave us something special, something we could believe in: Hope.” – Kristen, mom to Powie, CMN Hospitals Ambassador
(3/3) “I want to be a dancer when I grow up. And I want to have a nail shop. And I really want to be a horse trainer. I love to ride horses! On my birthday, we are going on an overnight horse camp ride! I want my horse to be named Gingersnap.” – Powie, CMN Hospitals Ambassador
Miracles In Motion tells the inspiring stories of our patients, families, clinicians and staff in their every day lives. These moments that occur inside the walls of UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital are what make this incredible hospital such a special place to over 150,000 patient families each year that are treated there. Follow along with the Miracles In Motion tag below to learn more about these stories and how Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals makes even the most ordinary moments extraordinary.