Copyright 2000 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
St.
Louis Post-Dispatch
December 3, 2000, Sunday, FIVE STAR LIFT
EDITION
SECTION: EVERYDAY MAGAZINE, Pg. E1
LENGTH: 875 words
HEADLINE:
SON'S DEATH IN ACCIDENT INCREASES THE BURDEN OF NEEDLESTICK
VICTIM
BYLINE: Marianna Riley
BODY:
Julie Naunheim-Hipps already was
living one nightmare -- fighting hepatitis C that she'd contracted from a
needlestick injury -- when she was faced with another two
months ago.
Her son, Matthew Hipps, 18, was killed when his car hit a
median on Interstate 70 in the early hours of Sept. 29. Authorities think he
fell asleep at the wheel of his mother's car.
The news, delivered to
Naunheim-Hipps when she was spending some time at the home of her sister in
Austin, Texas, is every parent's worst fear. And although Naunheim-Hipps, a
nurse, is having a hard time coming to grips with the reality of her son's
death, she says she won't give up a fight she'd already started -- a fight to
make the profession she's been forced to give up safer for the nurses and other
health-care workers who will follow her.
In a way, her son's death has
made her all the more determined. "He was so proud of what I was doing.
I know what he would have wanted me to do," she says.
Standing all of 5-feet, Naunheim-Hipps, 43, is a tiny woman. She's lost
25 pounds during the chemotherapy for her illness, and, since her son died, she
has even less appetite. Only her brown eyes are large.
It was just over
a year ago that Naunheim-Hipps got stuck with the needle of a patient with
hepatitis C. Within a month after the incident, she began feeling sick and
extremely tired. She was having trouble concentrating, but she tried to convince
herself she was merely exhausted and just needed a vacation.
A few weeks
later, Naunheim-Hipps learned she had tested positive for the virus.
She
was terrified. "You're so tired you can't concentrate and so depressed you can't
focus. I couldn't really function," she said.
Already her liver was
damaged. She could do little besides lie on her couch and feel hopeless.
She did that for four months, before deciding she couldn't go on that
way. Taking her mother to the hospital for what turned out to be a false-alarm
kidney stone turned out to be a major turning point.
Waiting in the
emergency room at SSM St. Mary's Health Center in Richmond Heights, she saw
needles -- complete with safety devices -- on display. She had never seen
needles that retracted automatically into their own housing after use. She knew
that if she had had those needles a few months earlier, she would never have
been stuck.
She went straight home. She logged onto the Internet,
looking for more information on safe products. She asked for samples of the
products so she could take them to other hospitals.
"It was piecemeal --
I'd find out one little thing and would check that out. And I kept finding more
and more pieces to the puzzle," she said.
Throughout she was
encouraged by her son.
"Mom, how's it going?" he'd ask each day when he
got home from Kirkwood High School. And then the two would talk about what
they'd each done that day.
Matthew worried about her illness and
her treatment.
Naunheim-Hipps has been on a combination drug therapy
that combines Interferon and ribavirin. It will still be at least six months
before she will have further tests and blood work to see if the drugs worked.
Matthew "reacted sort of the way I did, by finding something he loved to
do," she said. "His counselors also encouraged him to look for healthy behaviors
to replace the anxiety. And everything was working so well .o.o.."
Matthew's interest in photography and journalism was his outlet. He was
on the school yearbook staff and worked two part-time photo jobs, one in a
portrait studio and one in a photo-developing lab. In addition, he worked at the
St. Louis Bread Co. in Kirkwood. He was about to start as a free-lance
photographer at the Post-Dispatch.
Last month, Naunheim-Hipps visited
the restaurant, where some of Matthew's many high school friends still work.
It was the first time she had visited there since Matthew died. She
hoped to find it comforting. It was.
"This is what keeps me going -- at
least 400 kids, all good friends of his," she explains. "They call me and they
always say, 'I love you.'o "
It hadn't always been easy with Matthew.
He'd had alcohol- and drug-abuse problems that started when he was in seventh
and eighth grades. But with a lot of counseling and help he overcame those
problems and had been on a crusade to help other young people stay sober. He was
always happy to be a sponsor and always encouraged all his friends to avoid
drugs and alcohol.
Because an Alcoholics Anonymous program was so
helpful to Matthew, Naunheim-Hipps and her husband, Jack Hipps, still try to go
to the AA meetings. "We still meet every Friday. It's the best therapy we could
have gotten," she said.
Wiping her tears, she reflects how some days are
better than others, "I try to be strong; I want to be strong for my family, but
sometimes things just hit you."
Visiting the portrait studio where
Matthew had worked, she looks at some pictures of her son. She'd never seen some
of them.
"He was so proud of that new lens," she said pointing to the
camera her son was holding in one of the photos.
"He was so proud of
you," one of her son's former co-workers tells her. "He thought you were just
the greatest mom, and he said so all the time."
GRAPHIC: PHOTO (1) Color Photo - Naunheim-Hipps works
from her home, sending e-mail nationwide to help organize support for safer
equipment for nurses.
(2) Photo - Matthew Hipps - He was a comfort to mom.
LOAD-DATE: December 4, 2000
