Please Pray for Sonia

Dear Friends and Loved Ones,

It's Friday evening here in Tokyo and we're praying that we can make it to week 22 and 4 days.

Where do I begin.

We started the morning very early today. As I might have mentioned, I've been emailing various hospitals and doctors in the U.S. to see if we could get some advice from other experts for Sonia, Rachel and Isaac.

Believe or not, one doctor was kind enough to call but at 6am! We'll take it and we're thankful. In any event, the doctor seemed like he's had a lot of cases like Sonia's and that he was confident about what needed to be done. Unfortunately, in these cases, he suggested that the most effective treatment was to induce labor and remove Rachel and then artificially stop labor before Isaac's water breaks (something our Dr. Sakamoto has mentioned as well in the past). The idea would be to remove the baby that presents the highest infection risk and threat to the mother and the remaining baby and then proceed with Isaac for as long as possible. After I told him that Rachel's hand was already visible, he felt that there really was no better option and that the matter was quite serious and urgent because of the risk of infection. He felt strongly enough about it to suggest that we even consider taking the risk of a 12 hour flight to Denver to admit Sonia and the twins to his hospital. While we'd totally consider doing that under other circumstances, unfortunately, Sonia is totally exhausted and can barely walk to the restroom by herself now. As no commercial airline would take Sonia if we disclosed the full extent of her complications, she'd be just another pregnant passenger in biz class which would mean lots of sitting up and waiting. More importantly we simply couldn't embrace the concept of the thought of flying to Denver knowing that the first thing they would do is terminate Rachel's life. We fully understand that Sonia's health and that of Isaac are on the line here as well but God has given us two babies and both have been so amazingly brave thus far. We still have no sign of infection, both continue to grow and heartbeats are strong - how can we deny Rachel and Goda a chance to work another miracle after these many weeks that no one thought we'd have?

In any event, events beyond our control quickly removed this option from the table. Sonia's regular check-up today revealed that her cervix had dialated even more and that Rachel had further extended her hand and arm out of Sonia's womb. The attending doctor then had Sonia get back up and climb onto a bed to have an ultrasound done. Rachel is still a week or so behind and Isaac is still about 1.5 - 2 weeks ahead. After all of this activity, the attending doctor allowed Sonia to walk all the way back to her room unassisted.

Sonia was obviously pretty upset by the news at that point but things got more serious quickly. Almost as soon as she had made it back to her room, Sonia started feeling a lot of pressure at the bottom of her uterus. This time they wheelchaired her back to the examination room and upon further examination, Sonia's cervix had dilated significantly and Rachel's arm and hand were so far out that they were almost visible from the outside. In fact, the doctor not only felt an arm and hand but a knee as well.

After a lot of discussion, they decided that what Sonia felt were uterine contractions so they put Sonia back on an IV to give her medicine to stop the contractions. Easier said than done. Sonia had very few decent vein candidates when she check in here a month ago and after more than a dozen sticks during the first few weeks, they weren't able to find any veins for the IV on either forearm. They ultimately resorted to inserting the IV into a small vein in Sonia's left hand using a tiny IV needle that is usually reserved for newborns. For some reason, the IV is causing shooting pains that we are praying will go away in time for Sonia to get some sleep tonight. In an attempt to help Sonia stablize the area around the IV, we actually ended up using the DVD case of "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Day" as a splint!

The contractions have subsided but the medicine (magnesium sulfate) is giving Sonia some pretty serious headaches and has definitely had a negative impact on her emotionally (it makes your heartbeat increase, sweat and causes you to be generally uncomfortable).

To top it off, we received a call from Dr. Sakamoto this afternoon wherein he informed me that he had received a call from our hospital because its neonatal intensive care unit was dangerously full with some recent premature twin deliveries. They have become quite concerned now that if Sonia goes into labor, they may not be able to provide the best possible treatment for hear and the babies and have asked whether we would consider moving to another hospital! While there are larger and perhaps better neonatal departments in Tokyo, they would know nothing about Sonia's condition and more importantly, Dr. Sakamoto would probably not be our primary ob-gyn. We're supposed to discuss it further this weekend but either choice is clearly undesirable.

Finally, we just received a call from our insurance company - we had asked them for help in finding an expert perinatologist in the U.S. with whom we may be able to speak but they have had no luck. Given the circumstances, none of the doctors with whom they spoke was comfortable doing anything over the phone without actually seeing Sonia and the babies themselves. Of course no one recommends moving Sonia so that sort of leaves us where we started.

Understandably, Sonia's spirits are down. It almost seems like we just can't catch a break. We know in our minds that God would never give us anything we couldn't handle and that he has been amazingly merciful and generous this far, but I guess we are still struggling with one wave of bad news after another. I wish Sonia could have at least seen little Rachel's hand the other day.

At this point, we are praying hardest that Sonia and the twins can avoid infection and that Sonia will feel better and more encouraged tomorrow. Seeing Rachel's hand was a big deal for me and I think it would help Sonia immensely if God could somehow show her a sign that everything will be ok and that she, Rachel and Isaac are in good hands. We're also praying that more bedrest, elevating her abdomen (this is another problem actually that we won't go into today) and wheel chair rides to the examination room will help stabilize things again. Finally, please pray that God give Sonia's mother physical and emotional strength as well as the daily routine of preparing meals and making the trip here, massaging Sonia and cleaning up is taking its toll as well.

I apologize for the length of the post. I wish we had something more positive to post today. We have made it through the day with the babies still intact. The nurse just left after confirming that both Rachel and Isaac's hearts are beating strong at 149. Sonia finally seems to be relaxing a bit. Rachel's water broke on March 1 and tomorrow will be a new month. I am truly thankful for these blessings.

I look back to the many times Sonia has told me how God has closed every door except the right one in her life at each critical proverbial fork in the road. I can't help but think that God has been doing that in this case during this past month.

Thank you as always for your prayers. Thanks also to the many folks who have posted and emailed their prayers and best wishes. They have been special, moving and so encouraging to all of us.

God bless,

Jong