As Innerspace-loving children, we were led to believe that there was nothing that Dennis Quaid couldn't solve by drunkenly shrinking himself down to a speck and flying around people's bloodstreams singing Sam Cooke songs.
But, in truth, even when you've fictionally been injected into Martin Short's buttocks you still have to cope with immense tragedies like the rest of us. That's something Dennis Quaid had to come to terms with pretty quickly this week when his newborn twins were accidentally injected with 1,000 times more of the anti-coagulant drug Heparin than usual. However, the good news seems to be that Quaid's twins are recovering well and showing "no adverse reactions." Hopefully this news will put an end to what must have surely been one of the most traumatic times Dennis Quaid's life.
True, the second-most traumatic time was when Dennis Quaid read the The Day After Tomorrow script and realised he'd be paid to out-run some ice, but that shouldn't diminish the relief he should be feeling now.
Because it's not an obvious source for sarcastic wisecracks, we've been choosing not to bring you news of Dennis Quaid's newborn baby twins getting accidentally injected with 10,000 units of an anti-coagulant drug instead of the recommended 10 in a Los Angeles hospital. It's not an ordeal we'd wish on anybody, even Britney Spears. And that's saying something.
But – to recap – on Sunday Dennis Quaid's newborn baby twins, a boy and a girl born through a surrogate, were inadvertently given a dosage of anti-clotting drug Heparin that was 1,000 times larger than normal. The potentially disastrous overdose has been blamed on a technician at the Los Angeles Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre placing the drug on a wrong shelf, which a nurse grabbed without apparently checking properly and administered.
However, after what must have been an indescribably tense few days for Dennis Quaid and his wife Kimberly Buffington, the hospital's chief medical officer Dr. Michael L. Langberg has announced that the twins are recovering well. Without naming the twins explicitly, Langberg said that while three patients were overdosed in all, one started clotting again naturally and the remaining two were treated with Heparin-reversing protamine sulfate, and everything is getting back to normal:
"Additional medical tests and clinical evaluation conducted on the two patients indicated no adverse effects from the higher concentration of Heparin or from the temporary abnormal clotting function. Doctors continue to monitor the patients."
Although there are bound to be repercussions from the internal investigation that's currently underway to discover why this terrible accident occurred in the first place, at least Dennis Quaid and Kimberly Buffington can be sure that the worst is now over and that their babies are no longer at any real risk of serious consequence.
And with that weight off his mind, Dennis Quaid can now focus himself onto other things, like why he hasn't made a decent film for 20 years.
Harry says
God have mercy on all parents. To be placed in such a sensitized emotional state as giving birth can generate, and then to be presented with a soul-reiving disaster, well it’s just exquisite torture. There is no escape for the parent because nature activates so many internal parental programs at the birth of a child, and the mother or father must obey those instinctual dictates. There is no walking away and nature’s compulsion is paramount: the child must be saved and the parent must see to it. Fortunately, very fortunately for Mr. Quaid, the news is taking a happy turn, and he can begin to come down off the ceiling a little. Fortunately also, nature also provides a whole smorgasbord of rewards for parenting, and we hope Mr Quaid will be able to sample some of that soon.