Reliving a child’s ‘miracle’
Published: May 29, 2005
Considering that she was born at 27 weeks, weighing 2 pounds, 5 ounces, Angelina Mussini seemed to do well her first week of life.
But then her health faltered. She could no longer breathe on her own, and her weight dropped to 1 pound, 12 ounces.
Her parents got an emergency baptism for her and were told that even if she lived, she might suffer brain damage from lack of oxygen. Twice, the Bel Air residents were asked if they were ready to give up on the little girl.
But Angelina’s parents, George and Lea, and the staff at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center continued to fight for Angelina. Doctors and nurses pumped oxygen into her tiny body by hand for 13 hours, and gradually her health improved. On Mother’s Day 2003, after 108 days in the neonatal intensive care unit, Angelina was allowed to go home.
Today, at 23 pounds, she is smart and energetic, though prone to respiratory infections.
Angelina’s parents and doctors recently got together again, this time to re-enact her remarkable story for the program Amazing Babies on the Discovery Health Channel. The show is scheduled to air this fall. The show was taped last month, with Lea and George Mussini and about 20 doctors and nurses playing themselves.
“I was really nervous that it was going to be traumatic to relive a traumatic experience,” Lea Mussini said. “At one point it did get that way, especially when we were re-enacting the NICU scenes, but I think my defense mechanisms sort of kicked in. In a way, I think it was sort of therapeutic.”
She first heard about Amazing Babies from a friend and found out in February that her story had been selected as the topic of an episode. Producer Tracylynne Williams said she selected Angelina’s story because it fit the show’s criteria of “something dramatic, miraculous and unusual.” But the thing that pushed her over the edge was a photo of Angelina with a Beanie Baby that looks enormous next to her, she said.
Typically, four stories appear on each one-hour segment, Williams said. Those few minutes of airtime are distilled from two days of filming.
The production crew started with interviews of George and Lea Mussini in their Bel Air home, along with footage of them taking Angelina for a walk, reading her stories and just living their daily lives. “To me, that was the funnest part of the whole weekend,” Lea Mussini said.
The couple also re-enacted the devastating call from the NICU, when they learned that their week-old baby was not doing well.
The next day, the crew set up in the hospital. It was apparently the first time GBMC had been featured in a national television program, said Michael Schwartzberg, GBMC media manager. “We’re going to have a premiere party when it airs,” he said.
Despite their lack of experience in front of the camera, the doctors and nurses got into the spirit of the shoot right away.
“It was the first time I did anything like that,” Dr. John Yacoub, the obstetrician who delivered Angelina, said of his television performance. “I had no problem getting into it even though I knew it wasn’t real.” He even got to play director when he pointed out that he shouldn’t wear the same clothes for two scenes that took place weeks apart, he said.
Lea Mussini, now 29, learned of troubles with her pregnancy during a routine sonogram at 19 weeks. That’s when she learned she had an “incompetent cervix” that would not be able to carry the infant to term. “I was on my way to having a second-semester miscarriage,” she said.
She quit her job as a teacher at Middle River Middle School and went on bed rest, punctuated by hospital stays to quell her preterm labor. When Angelina was born Jan. 23, 2003, at 27 weeks of gestation, it seemed like the worst of the ordeal was over, especially since Angelina quickly began breathing without a respirator.
Then came the bad news. “A week after she was born, we got a phone call very, very early in the morning that she did not do well in the night, that she was declining severely, and we should get over there right away,” Lea Mussini recalled. “We get there and several doctors and nurses were working on her. … She was very small and very weak and just not responding.”
Doctors even asked Lea and George Mussini, a Baltimore County police officer, if they were sure they wanted to continue the fight, but the parents refused to give up. “We basically did not leave her side,” Lea said.
Dr. Maria Pane, a neonatologist at the NICU, said the risk of significant brain damage was high. “It really seemed like all hope and chances were extinguished.”
After three or four days, Angelina began to gradually improve. She put on weight, and within three weeks she was back off the respirator. “We call it a miracle,” Lea said. “We’re convinced that someone was definitely looking down on her and us and gave her a second chance.”
Although Angelina wasn’t the smallest baby ever born at the NICU, her story is the most compelling Pane can remember.
“This is our greatest success story out of the Greater Baltimore Medical Center,” Pane said. “In the time that I’ve been here, I have not had as dramatic, as miraculous a story as this particular one.”
Yacoub agreed. “What is dramatic about this particular case was the resilient optimism of the mother and the whole family,” he said.
The experience created a strong bond between the Mussinis and the staff at GBMC.
“They were all so important in the whole process that she went through in getting her well,” Lea Mussini said. “We felt real confident that she was in really good hands. I just can’t say enough about those people. Everybody.”
When the Mussinis returned to GBMC for the filming, the doctors and nurses gave them a standing ovation, Pane said. Seeing Angelina walk through the door, “so full of life,” gave her chills, Pane said. “To portray that story has such incredible meaning for all of us.”
Lea Mussini said she hopes her story inspires other families who are going through hard times. “It’s amazing what faith and hope can do when you’re so desperate,” she said.
See also: Miracle grows each day
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