getting the premature shot

Today, I met someone whose hand is no bigger than a quarter. His name is Kaemin, and he's a preemie at the University of Colorado Hospital. As my co-workers and I filmed Kaemin, his twin brother Kristian was across the street having his second surgery. They were born 26 weeks old, and the brothers haven't been together since they shared a womb. Next to Kaemin, (who was just a tiny shock of black hair in two layers of swaddled blankets and tubes), was an infant in an isolatte-- her 'pod' (the area around her) was restricted to anyone but NICU staff, and in the five hours we spent hoping that Kaemin would wake up for the camera, not a single person even went near her. From the looks of it, she's one of the many preemies whose parents don't even visit her on a daily basis . These preemies spend every day in a plastic home, with feeding tubes substituting for an umbilical cord, and blankets pretending to be a sac of water. Radios next to their isolettes play white noise throughout the day, oxygen tubes pour life through scary-looking plastic masks into their mouths, and when apnea creates an alarming pause between their breaths, a nurse in clean blue scrubs shakes them, saying "breathe, baby, take a big breath for me."

Today was a truly powerful reminder of how I felt when I saw Wiseman's documentary "Hospital"in my snowy Hamilton film class. The film rattled me-- it was a non-narrative, black and white diary of the many ebbs and flows seen over the course of one day in a hospital. Young people scared to death as they have their stomachs pumped for drugs, middle-aged men learning that they have cancer, women clenching their husbands hands, scared and in pain as they try to bring a new life into the world. It's unbelievable how complacent we can become. Passing a hospital on the highway, we are concerned with the time, the amount of gas in our tank, the warm soda in the cupholder, the meeting or place we're heading. Many times, we don't even take a moment to consider that a few hundred feet away from where we sit, tiny bodies are inside struggling with everything they have just to breathe, eat, and try to open their eyes. That mothers sit for hours at a time, month after month, waiting for that one day where the baby might be able to look into her eyes, or better yet, be held in her arms.

It's impossible to look at a preemie's tiny hands and not marvel at how resiliant we are. Here he is-- too new to the world, arms flailing where they should be protected by a womb, and instead, a woman in scrubs is gently pushing his hands back for him, pretending to be the protective environment that he lost. Bright lights enter where darkness used to be; the close sound of the heartbeating will never be heard in that capacity again.

Kaemin was having a very hard day today, and it was difficult for me to be part of an intrusive camera team. My co-worker was intent on doing her job-- her mission was about the *shot*, which meant turning on a 5K light as doctors worked quickly to feed the just-barely-asleep baby; reaching in and removing a stethoscope from the flurry of activity because it didn't look good in the shot; speaking at full volume even though everyone else barely spoke in a whisper. Well, this is where producers are tagged as being...assholes. And I agree. I am not a good producer in a place like a NICU if this is what constitues as "good"-- and maybe I'm in the wrong profession because of that.
Although I won't sacrifice ethics for an attempt at getting "the money shot," I do think there's a way to balance the two on a shoot, and I'll work to find it.

As for today, I wasn't a production person at all-- I should get an 'F' for production effort. I was just an observer in a very foreign world, marveling at how tiny we are when we start out... marveling at how courageous and strong parents are when their infants face scary circumstances...marveling at the men and women who are trained to help these tiny babies make it through the NICU so they can go home and be regular, happy, wiggly, peanut-butter eating kids.

And that's as much babbling as I've got for the moment.

(*picture courtesy Google; not InJoy)