Candy Campbell and Associates » Media reviews and Interviews

Candy Co Hosts Talk Show

Candy — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 09:39:28 +0000

November Is National Prematurity Awareness Month

Greetings all~

Kicking off National Prematurity Awareness Month as media spokesperson for the March of Dimes in Northern CA, Candy the Nurse was pleased to co – host the Morning in Sonoma (2 hour!) talk- radio show with Ken Brown on Nov 1st.

Co Hosting The Morning Show 91.3 FM

My first guest was parent of preemie twins (and March of Dimes local representative), Jody Olney, whose micropreemie twins were born < 2 lbs. at 25ish weeks. The interview will be available here as a podcast in a few days—keep checking back. Thanks for joining us, Jody!

Other guests included fellow actor, Hester Schell, long time friend and now author of Casting Revealed, soon to be published by Michael Weise Publications. (Yours truly was honored to write the forward, since my kick-in-the-pants helped inspire her to pen it!) Look for it this January…

And last but certainly not least, Steve Doherty, another long time friend, and President of the Sonoma Development Center Family Foundation. Steve works tirelessly to ensure a culture of caring is extended to the mentally disabled residents on that idyllic site of >1000 acres in northern Sonoma County. Watch for news of their annual fundraiser coming in spring.

Thanks to all my guests!

New Review For Micropremature Babies Film

Candy — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 07:31:37 +0000

Here’s a new review for the film.

Thanks to our friends at Cinesource ! Check them out: http://cinesourcemagazine.com

Blogger-at-Large

Overlooked & Underrated Docs & Features

Micropremature Babies: How Low Can You Go?

Get out your handkerchiefs. Produced and directed by San Francisco Bay Area writer/actress/teacher Candace Campbell, “Micropremature Babies” (http://peripateticproductions.com) introduces us to the world of premature births, as of circa 2003. Campbell interviews mothers, parents and healthcare professionals about their experience of taking care of newborns, starting with those born after 24 weeks of gestation.

Yes, you’ll need those handkerchiefs. The parents relate the rainbow of emotions that arise in response to pre-term birth – the pain, fear, anger, and joy. We learn about survival rates – starting with the 24 week birth and increasing with every additional week of gestation – and the health risks and challenges survivors and their caregivers face. We learn about the improvements in technology that enable improving survival rates. And we see happy, loving children who would not be here had it not been for that technology and for…well…., obviously there are countless parameters that effect both survival rates and the subsequent health of survivors. One of the social workers interviewed commented to the effect that, in her opinion, the most significant factor in survival and optimum health has to do with the environment the child finds at home. One of the physicians interviewed seconded that thought. The message is clear, loving care makes the biggest difference which, of course, applies to all children.

D. Schwartz October 21, 2010

New Review for “I Was a Preemie”

Candy — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 19:11:53 +0000

Hello bloggers,

Another review to share with you about the latest book, Good Things Come In Small Packages (I Was A Preemie) from the Oregonian reporter (and mom of former preemie), Amy Wang.

Book review: ‘Good Things Come in Small Packages: I Was a Preemie’

By Amy Wang, The Oregonian

April 08, 2010, 4:18PM

View full sizePeripatetic ProductionsHere’s a relative rarity: a book written specifically for children who were born prematurely.

“Good Things Come in Small Packages” (Peripatetic Publishing, 28 pages, $14.95) was the idea ofCandy Campbell, a Portland native and registered nurse who’s also madea documentary film about “micropremature” babies. She wrote the book from the viewpoint of a little boy learning about his too-soon arrival from his parents, grandfather, uncle and other family members.

The short story is told in simple and sweet language that is best suited to beginning readers (the book is recommended for up to age 8). Michael Vincent Fusco’s soft, bright and humorous illustrations complement the text nicely. In a nice touch, the boy wears thick glasses — “a nod to the fact that so many of our micropreemies have eye surgery and need to wear glasses at an early age,” says Campbell. I’m thinking the glasses also give parents an opening to discuss the fact that preemies sometimes have long-term health and/or developmental issues.

It’s definitely a book I’ll be sharing with my own former preemie.

The price may seem a little high, but $1 from each sale goes to March of Dimes, a national nonprofit whose mission includes preventing premature births.

Got another book about preemies to recommend? Share it below in the comments section.

And for more children’s books about preemies, check outhttp://www.prematurity.org/premiebooks4children.html.

– Amy Wang

http://blog.oregonlive.com/themombeat/2010/04/book_review_good_things_come_i_1.html

Enjoy!

Candy

Another Article in Nurseweek Magazine and Nurse.com

Candy — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:55:21 +0000

Hello out there in Blogland~

Super news this month! The good folks at Nurseweek magazine (Nurse.com online) have written another article featuring yours truly. This one is about our newest website and the latest book, Good Things Come in Small Packages (I Was A Preemie). (Special shout-out of thanks to Laura Stakal!) Read below or click here to see the whole issue: http://news.nurse.com/article/20100111/CA02/101110037

Nurse Continues Mission With Next Book

A nurse with a passion for writing has launched a new Web site, which spreads the message of her nursing mission.

Candy Campbell, RN, MSNc, says it is important for nurses to reach out to families through education. She follows her children’s book “My Mom is a Nurse” with newly published “Good Things Come in Small Packages (I Was a Preemie).”

The Web site offers information for families about Campbell’s publications, as well as a section of “free stuff” for kids. According to Campbell’s Web site, $1 from the sale of each book will go to March of Dimes in acknowledgment for its work with families of premature babies.

Campbell has been a neonatal nurse for almost 20 years and is a spokeswoman for the March of Dimes, California. Before that, she worked as a labor and delivery nurse and educator, as well as an ER/ICU/CCU nurse. She now works part time in a Level III NICU while pursuing other creative interests.

“My mission is just to help families cope,” Campbell says.

More Kudos for Micropremature Babies Film

Candy — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:33:35 +0000

Happy Thanksgiving, All!

This year is flying by, as opportunities for speaking/writing accelerate over here.

The latest film review is from another professional source, the Journal of Neonatal Nursing.

The reviewer writes, “…this video is an excellent source for parents to find hope in shared experiences. By watching this film, parents new to dealing with prematurity could encounter a little less fear in the whirlwind of decisions and procedures. Hearing that at least one family struggled to bond through the tangle of wires and tubes, or another mother suffered by not being able to hold the child separated from her womb too soon, or a couple felt confusion arriving home with no child in arms, new parents could anticipate and perhaps better weather the journey of assisting their premature infants to their best possible future.”

Click here for the whole article:

Nurse Week Magazine Highlights Micropremature Babies Film

Candy — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:40:55 +0000

A generous praise was given yours truly by Laura Stakal, writer for Nurse Week Magazine (aka: www.nurse.com, online) for the film, Micropremature Babies: How Low Can You Go? plus the new children’s book, My Mom Is A Nurse. Click here to access the article from nurse.com:

http://news.nurse.com/article/20090615/CA02/106150056

Nurse Sends Messages of Care Through Book, Video

By Laura M. Stakal

Monday June 15, 2009

Candy Campbell, RN, wants to reach out to families and nurses through education. That’s why she wrote the children’s book “My Mom is a Nurse” and directed the film “Micropremature Babies: How Low Can You Go?”

Now Campbell, an NICU nurse for more than 15 years, was asked to be a spokeswoman for the California Chapter of the March of Dimes. In this role, she says she will help with fundraising and speak at March of Dimes events.

“My mission is just to help families cope,” says Campbell, who adds that a portion of proceeds from her book and movie benefit baby-friendly charities including Easter Seals and March of Dimes.

“Micropremature Babies: How Low Can you Go?” was a 2003 finalist for the International Medical Media Awards, also known as “The Freddies.”

Campbell says her aim is to get the video into the hands of parents. Hospitals also have used the video as a training tool because it addresses what parents of premature babies are going through.

“It asks important questions we need to be asking,” she says.

Campbell adds that the theme in her work is all about telling the truth in love. “I want them to laugh, but I also want them to be touched.”

Her book became available for sale the week of Mother’s Day, which also was National Nurses Week.

“My Mom is a Nurse” is available for sale online.

“The stars were aligned,” she says.

The film — which was a finalist for the International Medical Media Awards — and the book are available to purchase online. Learn more about Campbell’s work and view the movie trailer at www.candycampbell.com.

Laura M. Stakal is regional editor for NurseWeek. To comment, e-mail editorCA@nurseweek.com.

Part 2 with KGO’s John Rothmann

Candy — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:37:16 +0000

Click here to access part 2 of the interview, where John extols the virtues of My Mom Is A Nurse and we answer listener questions about preemies, nursing and the state of health care .

kgo-podcast-1b-5-10-09

Oregonian reviews Micropremature Babies film

Candy — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 08:08:06 +0000

Oregonian reporter Amy Wang, writing in her family-centered blog called, “Omamas” gives a glowing review of the Micropremature Babies film. Check it out, here:

http://tinyurl.com/cmdtfo

Home > Omamas

Film looks at the emotional, ethical side of ‘micropreemies’

Published: Saturday, April 25, 2009, 6:15 AM Updated: Wednesday, April 29, 2009, 1:44 PM

Amy Wang, The Oregonian

When my son was in the neonatal intensive care unit at Providence St. Vincent, we joked that at 5 pounds, he was “the giant of the NICU.” With the stress we were experiencing, we didn’t dare imagine what the other parents were going through.

Now Portland native Candy Campbell is offering help to such parents through two avenues: her new blog, the Preemie Post, and her newly available documentary film, “Micropremature Babies: How Low Can You Go?”

To learn more about premature births

» U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

» National Institutes of Health’s Medline Plus

» March of Dimes

» Mayo Clinic

» American Pregnancy Association

» March for Babies April 25

Campbell, who lives in the San Francisco area, has been a registered nurse for 30 years, the last 20 in the NICU specialty area. The idea for a film about “micro-preemies” came to her in the mid-1990s following media coverage of research on children born premature in the 1980s. Researchers were reporting that such children ended up with low IQs and mostly did not finish high school; numerous articles quoted some experts implying that micro-preemies were a drain on society. In Campbell’s world, the articles “devastated” the parents of such babies.

So Campbell decided in her film to focus on the emotional and ethical angles of treating extremely low-weight babies. That was also a natural step for a nurse who’s seen neonatal technology and knowledge expand over the last 20 years.

“The difference between babies being born now and when I started in 1989 in the NICU … then, we could only barely keep a 28-week-old baby alive,” she recalls. “I was morally opposed to what we were doing.” These days, by contrast, a baby born as early as 24 weeks’ gestation is considered to have a decent chance for survival.

Neonatology, Campbell says, wasn’t even a specialty until about 1965. The first preemie monitors showed up around 1969. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that NICUs had ventilators sized for their patients, she says. And when she moved to neonatal care in 1989, doctors and nurses didn’t have the equipment for long-term IV access to such tiny babies, she recalls.

Neonatal technology finally took off around 1995. “We started saving these babies to good effect,” says Campbell. That led to a big shift in medical thinking, as doctors would see babies coming off ventilators at 34 weeks. “They were so amazed at the differences that they just got to thinking that all we do (in the NICU) is miracles — give us nothing and we’ll make it walk and talk and be normal,” Campbell says.

But surviving a premature birth was only the first step, Campbell realized. She wondered: How did these babies’ health fare later? What happened in terms of their development? How did they — and their parents — handle life without the safety net of the NICU?

“I wanted a vehicle that would answer all of these questions and more … that would touch on ethical issues, that would really concentrate on what happens when you take this baby home.”

Campbell does acting jobs on the side — voiceovers, industrial films — so she began pitching her film idea to the producers she knew. No one bit, but everyone found the idea interesting. Finally, Campbell decided to do it herself. She enrolled at a local college and took technical certification courses in film production.

“I interviewed, first of all, lots of families that I knew … I was either the primary nurse or very close on most of these cases. Then I went around and shot a bunch of footage — mostly at home with the families.”

Eventually, she winnowed the families down to a half-dozen. And she followed them as the children grew. “The oldest child was 8 when I first started … when I finished she was 11.”

When it came to the parents Campbell interviewed, she says, she found that unresolved grief was the biggest issue. In the initial frenzy of the birth and the intensive care, then in the subsequent chaos of having a newborn at home, many of the parents simply sealed off their emotional reaction to having a premature baby.

“You don’t have time for your own personal thoughts and you don’t realize you are burying something very deep,” Campbell says. “It was cathartic for these families” to participate in the film.

For the ethical perspective, Campbell interviewed a neonatology expert at the University of California, San Francisco. He told her that the statistics for babies born at 24 weeks’ gestation include a variety of births, from unexplained prematurity to multiple births to babies born addicted to street drugs. “You wind up with a bell curve that shows that you have increased the number of babies with an IQ of less than 69,” Campbell says. The ethical question, then, when it comes to saving such premature infants: “We can, but should we?”

“Micropremature Babies: How Low Can you Go?” runs approximately 42 minutes. It is available now for $19.95 on Campbell’s Web site; she says it also will be available at Amazon.com within the next couple of weeks.

- Amy Wang; amywang@news.oregonian.com

Related topics: film, micropreemies, premature births

Comments Feed

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stingrae April 25, 2009 at 11:56AM

I come from the UK, and have, unlike many Brits, considered the NHS (National Health Service) a blessing. It brought medical care to people who never had a hope of receiving it otherwise, and is what I consider to be the great equalizer. However, NHS resources are limited, and many tough decisions are made on how to best allocate those resources, so the question of “Should we?” comes up often. Then there is a class of parents who have had a lifetime of shelter from all bad things. And this brings lawsuits, in a country just learning about lawsuits, over prolonging the lives of very fragile infants at the expense of providing care to children with a better chance at survival and long-term good health.

When I first visited with my new primary care physician, she commented on the number of miscarriages I had. She expressed shock at why I had not “done anything about it”. I told her that nature had chosen their fate and perhaps spared my children a very tough life in a world that demands perfection. She disagreed, in a tone that told me she was making a moral judgement against me.

I would not wish the death of a child on anyone, though it is a pain suffered by our forebears with alarming regularity. But life does go on, we suffer, grieve and heal. It hurts, but it’s the hurt that changes the things we value.

I thank Candy Campbell for taking a courageous step to begin a conversation that should happen early in the pregnancy – because once the treatment has started, it is very difficult to stop.

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omamaamywang April 28, 2009 at 10:16AM

A reader passed along these comments for posting:

I would love to see the film about the super preemies featured
on OPB some day. Thanks for bringing up the subject.

The comments of Stingrae were excellent. Very articulate and dared to speak as others often will not. I am an RN who has always thought that too much of scarce health care resources are spent on tiny preemies, many of whom will have problems for life.

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Premiere KGO Micropremie Film interview- October, 2002

Candy — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:29:31 +0000

Click here: KGO Oct. 2002

Candy was a guest on KGO radio talk show host John Rothmann’s show in 2002, speaking about micropremature babies, the nursing shortage and the healthcare crisis in America. Click to hear an 8 minute excerpt of the 60 minute conversation, including some of the call-in questions and answers.

Candy Campbell and Associates » Media reviews and Interviews

Candy Co Hosts Talk Show

November Is National Prematurity Awareness Month

New Review For Micropremature Babies Film

Blogger-at-Large

Micropremature Babies: How Low Can You Go?

New Review for “I Was a Preemie”

Book review: ‘Good Things Come in Small Packages: I Was a Preemie’

By Amy Wang, The Oregonian

April 08, 2010, 4:18PM

Another Article in Nurseweek Magazine and Nurse.com

Nurse Continues Mission With Next Book

More Kudos for Micropremature Babies Film

Nurse Week Magazine Highlights Micropremature Babies Film

Part 2 with KGO’s John Rothmann

Oregonian reviews Micropremature Babies film

Film looks at the emotional, ethical side of ‘micropreemies’

Published: Saturday, April 25, 2009, 6:15 AM Updated: Wednesday, April 29, 2009, 1:44 PM

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Premiere KGO Micropremie Film interview- October, 2002