Image Credit: CFJC Today / Kent Simmonds

By Jill Sperling

Holiday Campaign

Family shares NICU experience to promote the RIH Foundation’s Holiday Fundraising Campaign

Dec 3, 2019 | 4:22 PM

KAMLOOPS — Every year, the Royal Inland Hospital Foundation highlights the story of an individual or family that has received care at the hospital.

It’s part of the annual Holiday Fundraising Campaign, one of the ways in which the hospital is supplied with necessary equipment.

This year the campaign shines a spotlight on the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit by telling the story of a baby girl, born seven weeks premature, and her parents, who have nothing but adoration for the caregivers who kept their daughter alive.

For Reggie Khurana and Nick Zinger, the health care providers at the NICU have become like family.

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“Definitely got to know the staff really well and near the end of it it just felt more like a friendship,” Khurana said. “They would celebrate every little gain that she had with us, which was really sweet.”

Khurana was diagnosed with preeclampsia about 30 weeks into her pregnancy.

“I had some lab work done and it eventually had led up to something called HELLP syndrome,” she said, “that’s where your liver enzymes can shoot up, it can affect your kidneys, your blood, platelet count, essentially it can lead to kidney and liver failure.”

An ultrasound showed a reversal in blood flow from Khurana to her unborn baby, and she was admitted to hospital.

“I only made it three days in the hospital until my liver enzymes had shot up,” Khurana said. “Essentially, we just needed to get her out and so they did an emergency C-section at that point, on September 27.”

Khurana and Zinger’s daughter, Penelope, was born seven weeks premature.

Image Credit: CFJC Today / Kent Simmonds

“You just don’t really prepare for it,” Zinger said. “You don’t know what’s exactly going on, but it’s comforting when all the nurses and doctors around you are so calm and know what they’re doing and handle the situation so calmly that it eases your nerves.”

The family shared their story Tuesday (Dec. 3) to launch the RIH Foundation’s Holiday Fundraising Campaign.

“So, for this campaign if we could raise the $100,000 that we’d like, we’re going to go to the top of the highest priority,” said the foundation’s CEO, Heidi Coleman, “and on there we have an ICU bed, we have an ultrasound, we have some stretchers for the ER and we have some equipment in the NICU, so it all coincides together.”

The nurses who helped Penelope and her parents were overjoyed to see the family return as representatives of the campaign.

“We got to know them really well,” said Savanna Pavan, one of the nurses who worked with the family. “I was there the day she delivered, and we brought her little one to the NICU for some care and we got to support their whole journey, which was a rollercoaster of ups and downs as most NICU stays are and we did our best to support them in the ways we knew how.”

For Khurana and Zinger, that support is more than enough of a reason to promote the Holiday Fundraising Campaign.

“I was a premature baby that spent some time here in the NICU as well,” Khurana said, “and I mean, anything helps, anything to help them to get the machines they need, the equipment.”

Penelope is now 10 weeks old and thriving, thanks to the care she received at the start of her young life.

If you would like to donate to the campaign, click here.