Helicopter medic makes difference for newborn

FAIRBANKS (AP) Friday was a case of crazy eights for a Livengood-area woman.

On the eighth day of the eighth month of the year, the woman delivered her eighth child, a premature baby girl who was flown to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital by military helicopter No. 8.

Dispatchers with the 68th Medical Company Air Ambulance at Fort Wainwright received a call at about 6:30 a.m. about a woman who had delivered a baby near Pump Station No. 7, said Maj. Larry Hallstrom. He said the woman and her family live in a cabin in the area.

The girl was about six weeks premature.

A medic stationed at the pump station first attended to the woman. She had delivered the girl by the time the helicopter arrived, but the baby was blue and needed immediate medical attention, Hallstrom said.

Kendall Greenleaf, a medic with the helicopter unit, treated the baby for about 90 minutes hours before mother and baby were loaded onto the helicopter to be transported to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital.

She lost all vital signs at one point during the trip, Hallstrom said, but was revived through cardiopulmonary resuscitation and other treatment.

There were no ambulances available upon arriving at the hospital helicopter pad and the mother and child had to be loaded into a Jeep Cherokee for the short trip from the pad to the emergency room, he said.

Hallstrom said that when Greenleaf left the hospital late in the morning, the baby was in the intensive care unit but recovering.

The mother's name was not released.