A Christmas miracle comes early in Brynlee Jade…
Published 3:58 pm Friday, December 18, 2020
Photo Contributed Brynlee Jade Norris is a true early Christmas Miracle for her parents - Nathan and Lyndsey Norris.
Photo Contributed It was a special day for the Norris family when Brynlee Jade was discharged from the hospital on December 4, 2020.
Photo Contributed Brynlee Jade right after being born and before being taken back for her emergency surgery, Nathan Norris was allowed to take a quick photo just before the operation.
Photo Contributed Brynlee Jade after her first surgery which resulted in the removal of 50 percent of her intestines.
Photo Contributed Brynlee Jade Norris was proclaimed to be a Miracle Baby by both her doctor and the surgeon that performed surgery to correct a super rare diagnosis of Volvulus. A medical journal is being written on the infant by her surgeon.
Photo Contributed Brynlee Jade Norris on September 16th, 2020.
Photo Contributed Brynlee Jade's smile can melt the hearts of 1000's.
Photo Contributed Brynlee Jade at 11 days old. She was on a feeding tube the entire time up until her second surgery on November 16th getting bottle fed very little once a day.
Photo Contributed To look at this photo of Brynlee Jade Norris, no one could imagine the turmoilous road the Miracle Baby had to endure to just to be at home with her parents.
Photo Contributed Brynlee Jade offers a smile even while going through her medical ordeal.
Photo Contributed Brynlee Jade receives a bottle from her mother, Lyndsey, as she recovers from her early-life medical ordeal.
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BY IVAN SANDERS
STAR STAFF
ivan.sanders@elizabethton.com
As a student-athlete at Hampton High School, Nathan Norris was accustomed to fighting uphill battles whether on the field or the hardwood.
Sometimes it was facing opponents who were just a little stronger or facing adversity in the closing seconds of a contest and looking at the scoreboard and realizing that without something short of an amazing comeback, the end result would be a loss.
And even though at the time, Norris may have thought these were some of the hardest times he would ever face, never in a thousand years did he imagine that these events could have possibly prepared him in some way for the greatest challenge he would face in his young adult life.
Norris met and fell in love with Lyndsey Cutshaw, a standout athlete in her own right playing on two state basketball teams as a member of the South Greene Lady Rebels in 2016 and 2017.
Lyndsey, much like Nathan, was accustomed to facing challenges and adversity in athletics and realized that sometimes you win and sometimes there are losses.
The two married and just like any other young couple was looking forward to the future and having children.
So one can imagine the excitement the couple had when they found out they were pregnant with their first child who was due to be born around November 17, 2020.
Everything was going fine during the early months of the pregnancy as the couple was planning for the arrival of their firstborn until one day when Lyndsey became concerned because the baby wasn’t moving.
“She kept on worrying about it but I told her it probably wasn’t anything,” Nathan said in looking back.
The mother factor that was placed inside a woman by the Creator of the Universe however just wouldn’t get any ease from not feeling the movement of the child that resided within and Lyndsey made a call to the hospital.
She was told to give the child a couple more hours to move and when that time expired, the couple headed to Franklin Woods Hospital where a monitor was placed on Lyndsey to check the child’s heartbeat.
The child wasn’t responding the way the medical staff wanted and they performed an ultrasound around 6 am.
Around 3 pm, the couple along with their unborn child was moved to Johnson City Medical Center where another ultrasound was performed. The images showed the child appeared to have enlarged intestines.
A high-risk OB-GYN came in to see the couple around 8 pm and advised them the child had developed a super-rare condition called Volvulus.
Volvulus occurs when the intestine twists in a way it’s not supposed to. The twist can cut off blood flow to part of the intestine which can cause that part of the intestine to die.
It causes the intestine to have the appearance of a coiled snake or a snail.
The doctor advised the couple that the child was going to need to be taken by an emergency C-section and that emergency surgery would be performed on the baby after she was taken.
On September 14, 2020, Brynlee Jade Norris made her entrance to the world at three pounds and 13 ounces at 13 and a quarter inches long but not in a way she would probably have desired should she have had a choice.
Fortunately for the couple, with the condition being rare, the surgeon that would be taking care of Brynlee was willing to take on the delicate surgery on the infant.
During that surgery, the surgeon removed 50 percent of the baby’s intestine and attached a colonoscopy bag which Brynlee wore until November 16th.
On November 16th, the surgeon performed a second surgery on the infant to reattach her intestines which had actually grown some after the initial operation.
She was on a ventilator for a couple of days and placed in an incubator where she stayed for a month until she could sustain her body temperature.
“It was one of the hardest things that we have been through,” said Nathan about having to watch as his child went through the ordeal. “Without God and each other, we would never have gotten through it.”
The couple made several trips in a course of a day to the hospital to be with their child as Lyndsey would stay during the day while Nathan worked and then the couple would come home to eat and then make the trip back traveling anywhere from 80 to 120 miles a day during Brynlee’s hospitalization.
“There have been so many people that donated money and we have tried to send ‘Thank You’ cards,” Nathan said. “So many have reached out to help through prayers and everything.
“We are just so thankful to everyone.”
The couple was given the best Christmas gift ever when on Friday, December 4, 2020, Brynlee Jade Norris was discharged from the hospital and came home.
“She is doing great,” said Nathan. “After her second surgery, we talked to the surgeon and he told us it could be three weeks to three months before she could come home.
“So we were thinking hopefully by Christmas. It caught us off guard when they told us she was able to be discharged.”
So for those who don’t believe in miracles, here is a story to be filed under that category and one doesn’t have to take it from the one writing it.
The words of the doctor and surgeon to the Norris family stated it loud and clear – Brynlee Jade Norris is a Miracle Baby!
So much of a Miracle Baby that the surgeon is writing a medical journal on Brynlee Jade for his colleagues who have never seen such a super-rare case.
According to Norris, the surgeon hails from Ohio and no one in that state has ever seen such a case as well as many others throughout the country.
In a year that has been filled with fear, worry, sickness, death, uncertainty, and much, much more, Christmas 2020 will be a special time for Nathan and Lyndsey Norris as they celebrate their first-born’s first Christmas.
And each year as the lights dance on the tree all covered with decorations from Christmases past, the Norris will know when they look into the eyes of Brynlee Jade they received the greatest Christmas gift ever in their early Christmas Miracle – Brynlee Jade Norris.
God’s special gift to Nathan and Lyndsey.
