Mom’s career change comes straight from heart after child’s illness

“It really changed your perception of life and what’s important,” Stephanie Eldridge said of having her first child, Taylor.

It’s a statement many parents could make, and probably do.

But nearly 16 years ago, the Turlock resident and her husband, Kevin, didn’t simply have their first child. Taylor also was a preemie, born 4 1/2 weeks early, weighing just 4 pounds 4 ounces, and suffering from what’s called tetralogy of Fallot, a rare condition caused by a combination of four heart defects. Those defects include a hole between the lower chambers of the heart and pulmonary valve stenosis.

Becoming Taylor’s parents didn’t only change how the Eldridges looked at life, it changed how they lived it. Kevin, already an EMT, studied to become a paramedic. And Stephanie, who was in banking, took a dramatic turn to become a cardiac nurse.

“My father had been in banking his entire life after the service, and I thought I’d follow in his footsteps,” said Stephanie Eldridge, who was a supervisor with a credit union when Taylor was born. “I enjoyed it, but never thought it was my calling.”

She took her first steps toward her calling during the early months of Taylor’s life. Taylor was born at a Los Gatos hospital, where her heart defects were diagnosed within a couple of days. Her parents were informed she’d need open heart surgery, but Taylor was going to return home with them for three months so she could grow a bit first.

“However, Taylor had a different plan in mind,” Eldridge recalled as she and her daughter sat side by side at their kitchen counter recently. “The day before we were to go home, she had … an obstruction at her pulmonary valve, which stopped the flow of blood to her lungs and it pushed all of that unoxygenated blood through the hole in her heart and out into her body, so she turned blue, her oxygen went to 50 percent.”

Kevin was holding Taylor at the time, and yelled for a nurse. Emergency action was taken, and a UC San Francisco Medical Center transport team was rushed to the hospital. The couple’s 6-day-old “little peanut,” as Stephanie Eldridge referred to Taylor, soon was intubated and had IVs in her head. “By all means, they were just trying to keep her alive. …

“Thank God we were only 45 minutes from UCSF and the surgeon got consults on all the information on his ride into the city. We baptized her there in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) at 9 o’clock at night and she went into surgery about 10 on a Sunday night and was in surgery until 5:30 the next morning.”

Taylor was at the medical center the next 65 days. Because she was a preemie, there were many complications, including with feeding, infections and abnormal heart rhythm. “We were really scared we were never going to leave,” Eldridge said. “But Kevin believed that if we got her home, she would thrive. … I didn’t have any medical background, and I say that was what got me through those two months. I didn’t know what to be worried about.” Ignorance wasn’t bliss, but it helped a bit, she said.

During those many days at Taylor’s side in the medical center, nurses were preparing Eldridge to care for her baby, who would be going home on some serious medications. They wanted to make sure the new mom knew how to calculate dosages and draw medicines up into a syringe. She also had to be certified in CPR.

When they did get home to Turlock, Stephanie and Kevin tag-teamed on Taylor’s care. They began a notebook to keep track of feedings, when medicine was given, how much Taylor was producing in her diapers, whether she was active or lethargic, etc.

“So, we’re home a couple of weeks and Kevin is thrilled and I’m missing the nurses in the hospital and I couldn’t figure out why,” Stephanie said. “In my mind, I’m processing, ‘Well, what do you miss? Do you just miss the people?’ So I said to Kevin one day – and however he responded to me saying ‘I think I want to be a nurse’ was either going to take me there or not. And his response to me was: ‘Well, I think you should find out, Stephanie.’

“That was it, and I never looked back, I enrolled in my first class at MJC and just started chugging through the classes.”

Stephanie Eldridge took that first prerequisite class when Taylor was 6 months old and entered the MJC nursing program when her little girl started kindergarten.

Part of her recognized, of course, that becoming a cardiac nurse was knowledge that could help her care for Taylor. But that really wasn’t the driving force, Eldridge said, adding that her daughter was “a huge gift” to her.

“I grew up in a very Catholic family, and (after Taylor’s diagnosis) I kept thinking, ‘What am I supposed to learn from this experience? What is Taylor supposed to be teaching me?’ And I was afraid if I didn’t get it, if I didn’t do what I was supposed to do and get those messages about life and perspective and what was important, something would happen.

“So I think Taylor coming home, Kevin and I wanted to do something profound. We talked about doing a heart walk. … So I really felt that my wanting to become a nurse was my way of taking this experience with Taylor and paying it forward.”

Many healthy years followed Taylor’s first surgery, and she enjoyed an active life like any normal child, simply having to visit her cardiologist a couple of times a year. Then, in sixth grade, Taylor was given a treadmill stress test by her doctor and went into an arrhythmia. She began having regular extra heartbeats from her ventricle. So Taylor was immediately put on physical restrictions: no more dancing, soccer, jumping on a trampoline, swimming or running.

“I couldn’t even run across the street,” said Taylor, now a sophomore at Turlock High. “Normal kids go outside and they play, and if the ball rolled across the street, I had to walk across the street to get it.”

Her parents always knew Taylor probably would need a valve replacement at some point, and that surgery was performed 3 1/2 years ago. She received a cow tissue valve, her mother said.

In the time leading up to the surgery and well into Taylor’s recovery, Stephanie Eldridge says she was her daughter’s shadow, going to dances, on field trips, pretty much everywhere, to ensure her child was OK. It may have been a little embarrassing and annoying to have her mom hovering, Taylor said, but she choked up last week as she talked about her parents’ sacrifice and devotion.

“When I was growing up, in kindergarten, even when she was going through the nursing program, because I was so young, it didn’t really register what exactly she was doing,” Taylor said. “I knew she was studying all the time; I knew she wanted to be a nurse, but I didn’t really understand what that meant.

“But at the same time, I didn’t really understand a lot about my heart condition, either. … So during my second surgery – after all those years I was healthy, I didn’t really process much – but when I started getting sick, I more so understood why it was superimportant I had someone who understood, like my mom and my dad.”

When she was confused, Taylor said, her parents knew what the doctors were saying. And when the news was “heavy,” Taylor said, their calm understanding made things less scary.

Taylor – big sister to 13-year-old Abriana and 5-year-old Calista – can now swim, play tennis, and do all the things she loves. And her mom is in her ninth year of caring for cardiac patients at Memorial Medical Center in Modesto.

“She’s really conscientious about about what she eats, and exercising and taking her aspirin every day,” Stephanie Eldridge said of Taylor. “She’s helping her valve however she can, by making sure she’s doing all the right things. We’re hoping she sets a record and her valve is like 25 years old before she needs another one.”

Taylor, not dreaming quite so big, added, “I hopefully won’t have to have another till my mid-20s, if I’m lucky – just another valve replacement as I grow. There are people with my heart condition who have grown up, had kids, are perfectly fine. So, hopefully.”

This story was originally published May 7, 2016 at 8:53 AM with the headline "Mom’s career change comes straight from heart after child’s illness."