Giovanna DeLuca on the Road to Home
October 8, 2008
ECO Staff – Laure Cioffi, senior journalist
ELLWOOD CITY – Giovanna DeLuca just keeps amazing her parents.
Born July 22 with multiple organ abnormalities, Giovanna was not expected to live more than a few days. Today she’s on the road to a normal childhood and her parents hope to have her home soon.
“She really is our miracle baby,” her mother, Nikki DeLuca, said this week.
Giovanna was recently released from Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital to The Children’s Home and LeMieux Family Center in Shadyside where she is being treated for a blood infection. She will remain there until her blood infection is cleared and then the family hopes to bring her home.
 Nikki DeLuca said she has been amazed at the generosity of the Ellwood City community since Giovanna’s birth and the response to the Sept. 20 poker run held to cover some of the family’s expenses.
“Everybody asks why I moved back here from North Carolina and Tennessee. It’s the community. It was amazing the people who came, the companies and vendors in Ellwood who sponsored things for the Chinese auction,” she said.
DeLuca thanks the community for its financial support and said the family is now focusing on getting Giovanna home.
Born four weeks early, doctors didn’t give Giovanna’s family much hope even during DeLuca’s pregnancy. Her organs were not developing properly in the womb and her adrenal glands quit working causing damage to her kidneys. Her bladder and her bowels never separated and her lungs were under developed at birth.
DeLuca said doctors are still trying to determine why these things occurred during her pregnancy in hopes of helping other women who may have the same abnormalities in the future. Doctors have told the family they intend to write about Giovanna in medical journals and textbooks.
“They said they’ve seen a lot of these disorders in other kids, but not all in the same baby,” DeLuca said. “They’re not sure what caused it yet.”
DeLuca said doctors gave her little hope during her pregnancy that Giovanna would survive and urged her to abort the pregnancy.
She said Dr. Giovanni Laneri, a neonatal perinatal specialist at West Penn Hospital, was the first physician to really explain things and give them some hope for their daughter after her birth. That is why he became her namesake, DeLuca said.
“He did so much with us,” she said.
DeLuca said they expect Giovanna to undergo five surgeries in the next year to correct the problems with her organs and she is currently undergoing physical therapy.
“We have a long road. We have a lot of surgeries, but they think everything will be fine,” she said.
Today, Giovanna, off the ventilator needed initially to assist her breathing, weighs 11 pounds, 6 ounces and is expected to develop normally cognitively and physically after her surgeries.
“She’s alert. She stays awake a lot more throughout the day than my other daughter did at that age. She likes watching her mobile,” DeLuca said. DeLuca and her husband, Cory, have two other children Keyawna, 10, and Riley, 2.
(Laure Cioffi can be reached at LaureCioffi@EllwoodCity.org)
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