Word: angela
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...people who knew best -- her family, doctors and nurses -- Angela's death on June 9 was sudden and unanticipated. In fact, says Dr. Russell Raphaely, director of critical care at Philadelphia's Children's Hospital, until her final respiratory illness, he would have estimated "a better than 95% chance" that she would leave the hospital a healthy child. Says Angela's mother Joey, 25: "We thought she would be home this summer." Far from the tortured existence that many predicted, Angela's brief life was largely free of suffering. Repairs to her heart had rendered it fully functional. Her chest...
...problems, they placed her in a negative-pressure ventilator. The cylindrical device works like an iron lung, enclosing the body from the neck down in a vacuum, so that air flows through the nose and mouth and into the lungs without the effort of inhalation. Over the next months, Angela's caretakers began the process of weaning her from the machine. But in the meantime she was fed her baby formula through a thin nasogastric tube so as not to interfere with her breathing...
Joey Lakeberg made half a dozen trips to Philadelphia to see her red-haired, blue-eyed daughter, but financial constraints and marital problems kept her in Indiana much of the time. On her most recent four-day visit in April, Joey spent time holding Angela, blowing her kisses and trying to teach her to wink. Angela's father Kenny saw his child only twice...
...well who outraged relatives and the public by using money donated for the twins' care on fancy restaurants, a car and cocaine binges, Kenny has spent much of the past year in jail. He was in a drug-rehabilitation center when Angela died; hours after her death he was arraigned on auto-theft charges...
...parents' absence, volunteers and hospital staff provided nurturing. "People brought her presents and visited with her Christmas Day," notes surgeon in chief Dr. James O'Neill, who separated the twins. Nurses bought her clothes, which they laundered themselves. They read books to her and stroked her cheeks, and Angela returned the affection. "She would blow kisses," says nurse Maryann Izzi, who has two new dresses at home intended as gifts for Angela's first birthday. "If you walked up and said her name or if you were someone she recognized, she would have a smile or a laugh...