The amazing story of Tru Beare, born weighing just 1 pound

All miracles are not laid as a foundation on silence and stillness. Others start off with beeping monitors, sirens, and admonitions via whispers in hospital rooms. The case of Tru Wende Beare is such a miracle, a story that was borne out of desperation but nurtured with hope and brought on its knees by the will to survive that is out of this world.

Tru was prematurely born four months early and she was born at 26 weeks in gestation. Such a small girl (she weighed just 1 pound (probably, as much as a block of butter)) arrived much earlier when her little body was not in a condition to see the outside world.

She was a half-baked kid with underdeveloped lungs, skin like tissue, and organs that were really weak. Majority of newborns at that gestational period are still lying in the womb and cushioned in their development. However,

Tru did not receive her first breaths in the embrace of her mother but in the whirling order of a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in Royal Columbian Hospital where she was in the care in New Westminster, British Columbia.

Tru spent the first 11 days of her life living in an incubator – a sterile cocoon in which machines and medicines labored 24-hours a day to do what her little body was still incapable of doing on its own.

Her uncontrollable mother could only look, and she could not even touch or hold her new baby girl, waiting till doctors gave her some green water that will finally establish a first physical connection of a parent and a child.

It has finally happened and the day when Tru was, first time, cradled in her mother arms was highly emotional. It was not the normal post-delivery hug; this one came through tubes, wires and maneuvers, but it was intense just the same. It was a minor triumphal procession in the road marathon.

By 54th day, Tru became stronger to enable her father hold her in his hands, the first time. That moment, also, was the breakthrough – the emblem of the strong relationship and the unending optimism that her father and mother held over the uncertainty.

To micro-preemie parents, every day is a roller coaster of emotions: hopeful optimism, and dread, little triumphs, and unforeseen failures.

Just then Tru was beginning his battle. Instead, she had one of the most dangerous and frequently fatal causes of the intestines necrotizing enterocolitis, twice, and this disease can quickly worsen the condition of preemies.

She had two blood clots, congenital heart defect which interfered with her blood flow and chronic lung disease. She contracted MRSA or drug-resistant staph infection and had an encounter not with one but two short-kill blood infections including full-blown sepsis.

She had retinopathy of prematurity that also causes blindness. Throughout her 128 days at the NICU, she had undergone seven blood transfusions in order to stabilize her system. Neither were these incidents isolated or in disjunct time,

but were overlapping crises that always threatened to push things over the edge. But all the time, his medical staff never slept, made adjustments, gave their interventions, and did not leave any chance of the little girl in the incubator.

At some point a new milestone was achieved; on day 71. Tru had moved out of the incubator to the crib a seemingly easy thing that signaled major breakthrough. She was becoming strong. She was in the

process of having her internal mechanisms working more autonomously. And on day 90, she was weaned off low-flow oxygen support indicating that the lungs which were her weak link were growing strong.

To my relief, after four months of highs and terror-stricken lows, Tru was released out of the hospital. She left the hospital with oxygen lines and a longer than necessary list of follow-up care, but by then she was no longer in the NICU a place that both kept her and battered her. She was not only alive, but had demonstrated a spirit that was an inspiration to all the nurses, doctors, and therapists that she met.

The fragile Tru Beare of today is no longer the frail premature baby whose survival was even a far-fetched dream. She is an almost four-year-old child, a toddler who has rosy cheeks, eyes full of curiosity

and that smiling face that is contagious. Now she lives her life to laugh, to play and to be big sister, which was previously measured in hours and grams.

Even people who assisted her to survive have been astonished at her growth. She walks, talks and achieves milestones with dignity and a notch. Every small success is even more profound to her parents, who know how they went to the edge of losing her after her first steps and when she started talking.

The case of Tru is a reminder of how things can turn out when the knowhow of the medics goes hand in hand with the love of parents and the determination that little kid had to survive. It is a story of any

parent who holds his/her breath next to the bedside of any child in the NICU, a story of any nurse who continues serving long hours with boundless care, and of any child who has been born prematurely.

Tru is a tribute to the power of human spirit; not only of the body. She is not her diagnosis, not her set backs. Her story is good evidence that miracles are possible, although the world may not give you that chance.

Such a number of children just like Tru have unbeatable fights. Yet, they win even when they are not supposed to. And when they do, the world is better off because of this.