Medical miracle baby celebrates 60th birthday

Pat Powers and the basket in which she was carried as a baby. (Connie Jo Discoe/McCook Daily Gazette) [Click to enlarge]

Every year, when Pat was little, her parents made a big splash for her birthday, even though it came right after Christmas.

"The folks always made a big to-do about my birthday. I always felt so special," Pat Powers, of McCook, said recently, smiling with the memories. "I guess they thought it was really something that I made it."

It was.

A tiny Pat Powers riding on the tractor with her father. (Courtesy photo) [Click to enlarge]

Sixty years ago today, the life of the new baby daughter of Adolph and Sylvia Altman depended on a history-making airplane ride and a risky medical procedure in a hospital 318 miles from her home.

Family history indicates that Patricia Ann's delivery was normal. She was born on a Thursday, at 2 o'clock in the morning; she weighed 7 1/2 pounds. Two hours later, at 4 a.m., her daddy returned to the family's farm in Hayes County, 16 miles north of Culbertson, to get some sleep and to do the morning chores.

Within three hours, however, the doctor realized that the new baby had a serious blood disorder called "erythroblastosis fetalis" -- the baby's blood was Rh negative, her mother's was Rh positive. Sixty years ago, Patricia's survival would depend on a complete exchange of her Rh negative blood for Rh positive blood from a donor. And the transfusion couldn't be done at the hospital in McCook.

According to a news story written by Robert Kull of the Omaha Morning Herald newspaper, by 7 a.m. on the morning of Patricia's birth, Adolph Altman had been alerted and arrangements had been made to fly him and his new daughter to Childrens Memorial Hospital in Omaha.

Pat's mother would have to remain in the hospital in McCook, and her big brother, Jim, who would be two in April, was staying with Sylvia's sister.

Pat said that her dad first had to go to Hayes Center to get money at the bank before he could drive back to McCook and then make the trip to Omaha. "My aunt, DeLoris Altman, says it was so very cold -- minus 17 -- and Dad had to drive back to McCook," Pat said.

Bundling his new daughter in baby blankets and tucking her into a white wicker basket with soft blue trim and handles, Adolph Altman carried Patricia onto a Midwest Airlines plane at the airport in McCook at 1 p.m. for the trip to Omaha.

That flight on Jan. 26, 1950, made Patricia the youngest person ever to fly across the state of Nebraska, the Omaha newspaper wrote.

The Friday, Jan. 27, edition of the Omaha World-Herald indicates that Patricia was almost 15 hours old when she and her dad arrived at the airport in Omaha at 4:30 p.m. They were met there by members of the Omaha Fire Department Rescue Squad and Chief Eugene Fields, who placed Patricia in an incubator for the trip to the hospital, "sirens screaming."

It took about three hours to match Patricia's blood from the Red Cross Blood Bank, and two hours to complete the replacement transfusion of one pint of blood. "One pint of blood," Pat muses. "Not very much."

A picture in the Friday morning edition of the Omaha newspaper shows a sleepy-eyed baby in an incubator. The accompanying news story reports that Patricia's condition was initially critical, but that later it was upgraded to satisfactory. Patricia's doctor told the newspaper reporter, "She withstood the procedure very well." The next four days will be her most critical, he said.

"I asked Mom why I was so fat in this picture, and she told me it was because of all the bandages," Pat said. She explained that the blood transfusion "was not just a needle prick. I had a 2-21⁄2-inch incision cut just above my navel."

Patricia's father told the reporter that Thursday evening, "Everybody's been wonderful. I feel pretty good now, and I'm going to wire Mrs. Altman."

Patricia remained in the Omaha hospital for seven to 10 days, she said. "Apparently, Dad came back home and then drove back to Omaha, probably with Mom's sister and her husband, to get me."

A couple years later, Sylvia and Adolph Altman returned to the hospital in Omaha, this time to deliver their next child, a baby boy born with the same Rh factor blood disorder. "They tried everything to save him. He lived for a day or two," Pat said, but it wasn't to be.

Pat mused, "All this is so easily remedied today. Now, it's just a shot."

Pat said that she and her dad were especially close as she grew up. She's not sure if it was because of their bonding during her first critical days, but she doesn't dismiss the possibility.

"I always wanted to go putterin' with my dad. I'd do anything with my dad," Pat said, once even passing up a trip to see the circus to shock cane -- a hot, dirty job -- with her dad. "We were so close," she said, quietly.

Patricia lost her father and her first husband, Steve Heble, within six months of each other, in 1991. Her mother died in 2005. Pat's big brother, Jim, lives in Louisiana.

Pat and Steve had three baby daughters. Pat didn't have any blood disorder problems with her pregnancies. "I asked the first time I got pregnant," she said, "but there were no problems with my kids."

Pat's daughters are ShayLynn Schuetze of Denver, Shannon Heble of Omaha and Jenny Taylor of Houston.

Patricia's second husband, Charlie Powers, has two sons, Ryan of Bismarck, N.D., and Adam of McCook.

Between the two of them, Pat and Charlie have five grandchildren.

Sixty years ago, Omaha World Herald reporter Robert Kull began one of his news stories about Patricia and her eventful birth by writing, "Patricia Ann Altman will have quite a story to tell her grandchildren."

Kull wrote: "She will tell them she was the youngest person ever to fly across Nebraska. She'll tell them she got a completely new supply of blood when she was 18 hours old ... miles from where she was born."

Pat chuckled, no, she's never told her grandchildren the story of her first couple weeks of life.

Maybe she'll tell them now ...