Dr. Donald Craig was an intern at the former General Hospital in Saint John on a snowy night in January 1968 when a doctor asked for help.
The doctor had to give a baby at the nearby St. Joseph’s hospital, but a general woman was also about to give birth. That child was three months premature and expected it to be dead.
“Can you handle this?” The doctor asked.
Craig had delivered babies before, but only under the supervision of a doctor or a resident. Then he took a book on human work and began reviewing it.
Then a nurse came and told her that the baby was recruit, something that the doctor had not mentioned. Then he returned to his book to look at him. A few hours later, a nurse came to take him to the birth room.
“She yells at me, ‘Craig, she is ready, is pushing and is crying. We are’.
Craig had to break the baby’s clavicle when he left, but he managed to deliver to the baby, and still hoped that he is not born.
And then the baby began to cry.
“My heart went faster than the baby’s heart, and the mother began to cry, ‘Is that my baby crying?'”
Dr. Donald Craig gave Krista Barczyk in 1968. Decades later, Krista, his mother and the doctor who changed their lives remember that moment.
The baby was alive and Craig’s thoughts quickly turned to his survival. She weighed two pounds and was three premature months. His probabilities of survival were not great.
He knew that the general had just hired a pediatrician who specialized in newborn child care and premature births, and she was in the hospital during the night in case it was necessary during the storm.
Craig said the doctor soon appeared, wearing a bathing gown on his pajamas. She looked at him and asked: “Did you deliver it alone? Give me the baby.”
He said the doctor “lets the mother kiss her baby and said:” We are taking the baby down the hall. Let’s be fine. “Then she disappeared.”
To this day, Craig says that the doctor’s qualified care was fundamental for the baby’s survival, which was in the hospital for a month before being discharged. Craig reviewed her every day and gave up to her mother, who was not allowed to stay in the hospital with her.
“I took that baby, but [the doctor] He had the ability, and was trained to handle it from there, “said Craig.
A carefully managed secret
More than 55 years later, Craig is retired after a decades in family and emergency medicine. He has served as president of the College of Physicians and Surgeons again Brunswick and Medical Society Saint John.
He also founded the New Brunswick Medical Education Foundation, which provides scholarships to medical students in the province who agree to establish the practice here, a critical part of efforts to increase the number of doctors in New Brunswick.
In April, the Foundation gave Craig the award for the founder of Champions of Care in a gala at the Saint John Commerce and Conventions Center. The person who presented it with that award was Krista Barczyk, the premature baby who delivered as an intern during that January snowstorm.
It was a planned meeting that the Foundation kept secret from Craig until the moment Barczyk was called to the stage.
“I didn’t hear half of his speech because he was very surprised,” said Craig. “Then I received a copy of his speech and printed it to put on my wall.”
Barczyk and his daughter visited Craig’s table later to give him a hug and talk. Craig said he could see the multigenerational impact on his family.
“We not only save his life, we save the lives of his children and his children and continue,” he said.
For decades, Barczyk has told his birth story, but he really felt the impact with him on stage.
“If it hadn’t been for him, nothing I spent in my life would have happened. I would never have fallen in love. I would never have practiced sports, I would never have married me, if my three children and they could have grandchildren,” he said.
“You can tell your birth story 100 times, but when you are standing with the man who basically saved your life … it really hits you quite hard.”
His mother knew that it could be a fetal death
She is also grateful to the woman who gave her life: her mother Dorothy Fillmore.
Fillmore entered the hospital that day in 1968 because he had a lot of pain. I had only six months pregnant and was very worried about having a spontaneous abortion.
Fillmore said he was also aware that it would be a childbirth in the bedroom and that Craig went to the hospital library to study the procedure. Then, when he heard the baby’s crying in the birth room, his joy was attenuated by the concern that his daughter could not survive.
“I didn’t know if I was going to live or die,” said Fillmore, “so I stayed in that mentality until she began to gain weight.”
For the following month, it was that type of waiting game: increase some weight every day until it was ready to get out of the hospital to five pounds and 12 ounces.
‘I can’t get this story out of my head’
The history of the birth of Barczyk resurfaced due to Alyssa Long’s great interest, the executive director of the Medical Education Foundation, and staff members David Ryan and Natalie Boyce.
As part of the preparations for the awards gala, Craig participated in a video interview for communications materials for the event. They asked what stories of patients stood out more during their 43 -year career and began telling them about Barczyk.
“He gave me a sensitive fiber. I had about four or five months pregnant at that time and I thought: ‘I can’t get this out of my head,” Long said.
“He stayed with me and stayed with my team to the point that I said: ‘What would happen if we could find this baby?'”
He took eight weeks of detection, but found Barczyk and invited her to the event. She lived in Membook and worked in Moncton for a technology company. He has three children, three grandchildren, and is going to marry again in autumn.
Several family members, including their mother and older brother, arrived at the event in Saint John.
The story of Barczyk and Craig, and their meeting on stage, had a deep effect on many of the attendees.
“There were many tears,” said Barczyk. “I entered the bathroom and there were two ladies there. They were both crying when I entered, and they both shouted: ‘Oh, it’s you’. They approached me and said: ‘Tell us about the story again.’ They gave me hugs and one of them said: ‘You know, I will take the story with me for the rest of my life.'”
Craig and Barczyk gathered again several weeks later on the Craig rear deck overlooking the Kennebecasis river in Rothesay. They took a few minutes to look at their baby’s photos taken at the hospital.
She asked him questions about the birth and he once again told her the challenges she faced, even breaking her clavicle while running it through the birth channel.
He stretched the area of his shoulder and laughed, saying: “That’s why it hurts when it rains, it’s your fault.”
