The once distant sound of someone running that Lesley McDonald heard from the corridor outside her hospital room reached its apex when a doctor came bursting in.
“The doctor looked at me and said, ‘how are you feeling?’”
Lesley was almost 26 weeks pregnant with identical twins. Both puzzled and somewhat amused, Lesley responded ‘fine.’
“She asked if I was nauseous or anything. I started laughing and said ‘what’s the big deal, why are we panicking?’”
Lesley’s voice trembled as she vividly recalled the doctor’s response:
‘Your blood work came back from this morning. We’re going to have to take the babies, and we need to take them now.’
Up until that moment on May 20, 2006, Lesley was in denial.
Five days earlier, despite her insistence the chest pain she was experiencing was heart burn, her husband, Jeremy, called St. Joseph’s Hospital in London. Lesley was told to come to the hospital for tests. Preliminary tests revealed her blood pressure was dangerously high, and she was told to stay for monitoring. Lesley thought, ‘no problem, I’ll just stay here three months.’
Prior to that, the doctor she was previously seeing informed her he could no longer take her as a patient as there were some complications, and she was referred back to St. Joseph’s in London
Lesley had twin to twin transfusion syndrome, a condition where blood is transfused disproportionately from one twin (the donor) to the other twin (the recipient) during pregnancy. Tests at St. Joseph’s also discovered that proteins were spilling into Lesley’s urine, and she had high blood pressure which would require close monitoring.
Ever the optimist, Lesley wasn’t overly concerned. “Generally, people who had what I had get very bloated and sick, but I had none of that.”
Now, 14 weeks ahead of schedule, Lesley had developed HELLP syndrome, a rare disorder of the liver and blood during pregnancy that is potentially fatal, and the twins had to be delivered. As nurses scrambled to gather her belongings, Lesley was frantically and unsuccessfully trying to get hold of Jeremy who was home mowing the lawn. Desperate, Lesley called her sister in-law who lived a few blocks away who ran over and told Jeremy to get to London.
As Lesley had just eaten lunch, her c-section was delayed and Jeremy was able to get to the hospital before the procedure. Other emergencies stalled the procedure further, and it wasn’t until 9 p.m. when Brandon and Tyler were born.
Tyler (the recipient twin) was immediately rushed out the door and taken to the neonatal intensive-care unit (NICU). Brandon (the donor) was taken to a room directly off the operating room for immediate attention. Both had underdeveloped lungs, were unable to breathe on their own and put on ventilators and IVs.
Incredibly sick and recovering from the procedure, it would be three days until Lesley saw her two boys. When she finally saw them, Brandon was on an oscillator ventilator.
“His lungs were so underdeveloped; we couldn’t even hold him for 60 days.”
Lesley was released from the hospital five days later, but wasn’t able to take Brandon and Tyler home; they had to be kept on ventilators and monitored until their lungs developed.
Determined to see their boys, Lesley and Jeremy made daily trips from their home in Kirkton to London to see Brandon and Tyler. They would be at the hospital for 11 a.m., leave at three in the morning, and get up again the next day to start over.
During Brandon and Tyler’s stay in the NICU, there were multiple complications. They both had brain bleeds and developed cerebral palsy.
After three months in the NICU, Tyler was able to go home. However, after being taken off the oscillator ventilator and put on a regular one, Brandon had additional complications. He was aspirating frequently and developing pneumonias, which was causing further damage to his lungs. After six months at St. Joseph’s he was transferred to the Children’s Hospital for a procedure to repair the damage. After a month at the Children’s Hospital, Brandon was allowed to go home.
To go home, both Brandon and Tyler required oxygen, which was set up by ProResp.
“The day Tyler was discharged Sandra from ProResp met us at the house, explained all the equipment and how it worked and was always on call to help.”
While ecstatic to finally have her two boys at home, Lesley admits it was difficult.
“At the hospital, you had the nurses take care of them. Now you have two kids at home hooked up to cords, two kids on feeding tubes, there was equipment all over the house – it was chaotic.”
Despite the chaos and challenges over the past 13 years, the family soldiered on. The effects of Brandon’s cerebral palsy were much more severe than Tyler’s, affecting his everyday life. Brandon is confined to a wheelchair, is hard of hearing, has a tracheostomy, requires frequent suctioning and a gastrostomy tube.
While Tyler was getting healthier, Brandon had some close calls. On their first birthday Brandon became very ill.
“We gave Sandra a call, she came and looked at Brandon and said right away that we needed to get him to the hospital. He was there for two to three months and we were told he wasn’t going to make it.”
But Brandon pulled through, and is doing much better thanks to the tracheostomy, and the family continues to persevere. When reflecting on the quality of life of her two boys, Lesley was adamant that they just made the best of the situation they were in.
“It doesn’t stop us from doing the things we want to do. All families go through really stressful times, and we choose to be laidback, positive and happy – It’s worked well for us.”