Chelsea Ruehling, BSN, RN, RNC-NIC, C-NPT, NICU NPD practitioner, Parkview Health, shares her journey from NICU baby to NICU nurse.
“I was a meconium aspiration,” she shared. “Very shortly after I was born, I stopped breathing. They called in all my family from across the country to tell them to say goodbye to me because they thought I was going to die. I was intubated and placed on what's called the jet ventilator. The jet ventilator was new, so Parkview was the only hospital that had one at the time. My neonatologist would sleep at my bedside, making sure I was okay, and all the nurses took very good care of me.
“One of the nurses, when they didn't think I would make it through the night, went to the chapel and had a stone blessed and placed above my isolette. But miracles really do happen. I made it through the night and then slowly began to improve from there, and I spent two weeks in the NICU and came home on Christmas day.”
A career is born
Her heroic start would eventually lead to Chelsea’s professional path. “My mom told me the story of how I was born in third grade, and up until then I was a diehard. I was going to be a dolphin trainer. And after hearing the story, I wanted to be someone that could provide that care to families and help them in that traumatic time in their life and help heal babies.”
Chelsea has been a NICU nurse for 10 years now. Seven of those years have been on the NICU transport team, and, in October, she transitioned into a role as a NICU NPD practitioner. “We go by either flight or ground and go to pick up neonates from community hospitals and bring them back to Parkview Regional Medical Center to receive higher level of care.”
Connections from her past
Chelsea learned she currently works with one of the respiratory therapists who helped save her all those years ago. “We discovered it just having a bedside conversation and it just kind of came out that I was born in the NICU in 1991 and she worked here then,” Chelsea said. It just so happened that Shelley Herber, RRT, NPS, NICU respiratory therapist, Parkview Health, was on Chelsea’s care team. “I told her, ‘I'm okay. You did great. Thank you!’”
“Certain babies are easy to remember,” Shelley said, “because they were so critically ill that we never thought they would live, and then they did, and it was just such an amazing miracle. And Chelsea was one of those. You don't expect that one day you’ll be working with them! But Chelsea was meant for great things.”
The two have formed an incredibly strong bond. Shelley considers herself Chelsea’s “work mom,” often reminding her that she has a very special place in her heart. “I cherish it knowing that she was critically ill and now she's caring for babies. Just reinforces the miracle of what we do,” Shelley said.
Chelsea agrees. “Just having that connection with someone that saved my life and now I get to work beside her and work with her to help save other babies' lives,” she said. “It's a very surreal full circle moment and it just feels like it's where I'm supposed to be. I love every minute of it.”
