Tell Your Story

"It started out as any other normal night.  My 8 and 5-year-old daughters were tucked into bed upstairs and my wife and I went to bed as normal in our main floor bedroom.  To this day, the only explanation I have for my wife waking up at two o'clock in the morning is an incredible motherly instinct and a tap on the shoulder from God that her 5-year-old was in trouble.  She got up and went upstairs to check on her, partly because she thought she heard a coughing sound.  As soon as she entered the room she screamed at me to get up there.  Our daughter Jenna was in acute respiratory distress.  Her lips were blue and her stomach was sunken in from being unable to breathe.  She could not even get enough air to make any more than a very faint wheeze. I immediately knew this was a very serious situation.

I grabbed Jenna and told my wife to call the ER and tell them I was on my way and to be prepared for a child who could not breathe.  I probably shouldn't admit this but at two in the morning with no cars in sight, I hit the south end of Main Street doing seventy miles an hour.  All I could think about was getting my child help as quickly as possible.

As I pulled up to the ER door, Dr. Daehnke and a nurse were waiting.  They rushed Jenna in and immediately put her on oxygen and gave her a heavy dose of epinephrin.  They did an emergency x-ray and determined she was breathing through a hole not the size of a pencil, but the size of a pencil lead.  Her throat was nearly swollen shut.   

I thank God regularly for the response and availability of our ER and staff.  I honestly do not believe my daughter would be here today had the ER not been as close as it was.  Jenna made a full recovery and has never had a repeat of that awful night.  She is now a practicing optometrist in Denver and is eternally grateful to William Newton Hospital.

You don't need the Emergency Room until you do!  And when you do, I hope and pray it will be there for you like it was for us.  We all need to support William Newton's effort to rebuild the ER so that lives can be saved for the next hundred years."

- Rodger Steffen, Father, Business Owner, and Winfield Economic Development President

Rodger Steffen shares this story at the William Newton Healthcare Foundation's Annual Gala in 2023. The gala raised over $150,000 for the Emergency Department Expansion.