As an infant, Katelyn Gruver spent four weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit at Western Pennsylvania Hospital in Pittsburgh. Now, she spends her days as a nurse in that same NICU at West Penn.

Gruver, 27, who lives in Butler, was born at Butler Memorial Hospital about six weeks early.

While the typical baby is born at 40 weeks old, Gruver was only 34 weeks, causing severe seizures and other complications, she said.

“I had brain swelling and trauma, and that’s why I had seizures after birth,” she said. “I was intubated and given Phenobarb, a medication that helps to control the seizures.”

When Gruver was eventually released from the NICU, the doctors were not sure she would follow the normal developmental timeline for children.

“I went home on a feeding tube because they didn’t think I would learn to eat by bottle,” she said. “(My parents) were very scared ... my mom always tells me how the doctors at the NICU just told her to take me home and love me because they didn’t think I would turn out to be a normal child.”

Gruver said the doctors expected her to be delayed in skills like walking, even questioning if she ever would.

“I didn’t walk until 18 months old, and normally you walk when you’re 10 or 11 months old,” Gruver said. “My mom said that since the time I was 3, I was caught up. I met all of the milestones of a normal child.”

After recovering from her premature birth, Gruver at age 7 then developed a rather rare childhood disease called Moyamoya.

This is a progressive cerebrovascular disease that leads to blocked arteries. For Gruver, this affected her carotid arteries, the major blood vessels that lead from the neck to supply blood to the brain and face.

“The carotid arteries are the main blood supply to your brain,” she said. “My left one was 95 percent blocked, and my right one was 85 percent blocked.”

Those blockages can cause TIAs, transient ischemic attacks, which are essentially “mini-strokes” that can cause muscle weakness or paralysis.

“For me, my left arm would go completely paralyzed for periods of time, like no longer than an hour,” she said. “Whenever it would happen, I would tap my mom on her shoulder and say, ‘My arm’s asleep again.’

“She took me to a doctor, and the doctor was like, ‘Oh, her arm is just sleeping.’ They kind of just brushed it off, but my mom was very persistent.”

Gruver’s mother scheduled a consultant with Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, but the prognosis for Gruver was grim.

“They said, ‘There’s nothing we can do. She’ll probably just have a major TIA and have a major stroke,’” she said.

After more research, Gruver’s family found a doctor at Boston Children’s Hospital who was doing experimental surgery to create new blood vessels to replace the blocked carotids.

At the time, that doctor had done a couple hundred surgeries, but only half of them work, Gruver said.

“If it didn’t work, I would’ve just kept having worse and worse TIAs,” she said. “I would have had a major stroke, and I would have been severely disabled.

“So they did a surgery, and they basically made new blood vessels in place of my carotid arteries and attached them to the surface of my brain. As time progressed, they said new blood vessels would grow from the ones they formed.”

Being only 7 years old at the time, Gruver said she did not entirely realize what the surgery meant.

“I don’t really remember being nervous, but I don’t really think I knew what I was in for either,” she said.

Now, 20 years later, Gruver works as an NICU nurse at West Penn, helping infants and families in situations similar to the one she experienced.

While it’s not uncommon for an infant to spend time in the NICU — about one in 10 babies do — this is probably one of the only instances where an NICU baby came back to work for the hospital, according to Dr. Alan Lantzy, neonatologist and vice chairman of pediatrics at West Penn.

“I’ve been at West Penn for 37 years, and I don’t think there’s ever been a patient in our unit who came back to work for our unit,” he said.

Lantzy works with Gruver about twice a week, and he was a doctor when Gruver was in the NICU as well.

For Gruver, there wasn’t really a question that she would become a nurse.

“I chose to go into nursing specifically so I could go back and be a NICU nurse,” she said. “I wanted to be able to give back and take care of babies and be with their families like the NICU nurses have done for my family.

“If parents are struggling or if they have a baby that has a similar situation, then I can share my story with them, and it does give them some hope that their baby could turn out to be a healthy child.”

However, working in the NICU can be challenging and emotionally difficult, she said.

“The babies definitely (need more attention),” Gruver said. “They have a lot of complications that a normal-term baby doesn’t have.”

Unfortunately, some of those babies do not survive, typically a handful each year, Gruver said.

“There’s definitely days that are really, really rewarding because you see the babies that get to come home with their families. But there are babies who don’t survive, so those days are really difficult,” she said.

“I wouldn’t say that it gets easier when a baby dies, but you kind of learn how to deal with your emotions better when you’re face-to-face with the family that has the dying infant,” she said. “It’s definitely still just as hard when other babies die than when the first baby I (helped) died.”

But Gruver chooses to focus on the rewarding aspects of her job, including the relationships she can build with some families.

At West Penn, there are “primary patients,” babies who may need to spend up to four months at the hospital, and working with those families can be the most rewarding, Gruver said.

“You definitely develop a relationship with them,” she said. “We do become friends with the families, and it’s one of the few professions where you’re allowed to be friends on Facebook with them and follow up with them.”

Lantzy had only positive things to say about Gruver’s work at West Penn.

“She’s very thoughtful, very caring. She’s very conscientious,” he said.

“She’s very cool about it, even though she’s only been here three years. Many of our nurses have been here 25 years, and she’s a very quick study. She’s very compassionate with the families. They love her.”

Lantzy said he was not surprised that Gruver recovered from her time in the NICU to be where she is today. He credits her family for those accomplishments.

“I think she was very fortunate to have a strong and supportive family,” he said.

When Gruver isn’t working, she uses her vacation time to find more opportunities to help medically, going on weeklong missions to set up clinics in underserved communities.

In 2013, Gruver went to Guatemala, and she visited the Dominican Republic in 2015 with plans to return in 2017, she said.

“I love going on those trips. I love getting to treat all of the kids and the babies. It’s definitely very gratifying,” she said.

“I just love how the people down there are extremely grateful for the care that you give to them. As soon as you pull into their village, everybody comes running up to you. The kids come running up to you and give you a great big hug.

“It definitely teaches me that we’re very blessed with what we have. It’s definitely made me very grateful for what I do have as compared to what they have down there. We are very, very rich.”