In 1976, my wife of four years announced to me that she was pregnant with our first child. Such announcements are made in households around the world all the time.
What made this event somewhat unique is that my wife was the youngest person in the state ever to have a heart pacemaker. More than a decade before, when she was 17, one of those new-fangled devices had been implanted under her left breast at the Indiana University Medical Center.
It had been replaced there several times. Back then, the expected life of a pacemaker was comparatively short – a couple years at best – as most of its recipients were old people who were likely to die soon anyway.
Implanting a pacemaker in a young girl was a pretty unusual procedure. It caused lots of new situations to crop up for the surgical team and the pacemaker company: battery life needed to be extended, for obvious reasons; wiring and its insulation – even the size and composition of the pacemaker’s case – needed to be improved to compensate for the body’s natural rejection of foreign objects in it over an extended time, as well as for cosmetic reasons, given the age and sex of this recipient.
Since the University Medical Center was a teaching hospital, the ongoing relationship between the surgical team and the patient was pretty intimate, as she was “Exhibit A” for many young interns. The team got to know me over time as well, since we had been there as husband and wife a number of times for pacemaker-related events. Curiously, given the unusual circumstances of their patient, they had never counseled us as a married couple about any prohibitions or procedures to take, or avoid, regarding pregnancy.
When my wife discovered she was pregnant, she naturally wanted to call and share this good news with her friends at the University Medical Center. When she called them one afternoon, their initial response was “Were you on Heprin when you conceived?”
(Ominously, it was not “Congratulations!”)
“You should have been on Heprin,” they intoned. “You should NOT have been on Coumadin!”
Of course, she’d been on Coumadin, the blood-thinning anticoagulant she had been prescribed since her pacemaker was implanted. We’d never even heard of Heprin. Turns out Heprin gets out of one’s system in a matter of hours, unlike Coumadin which apparently takes days to get out of one’s system.
Evidently, if we were planning to conceive, she should have first been on Heprin for a while. Then, she should have been off Heprin itself for some hours before attempting conception.
Why?
Turns out Heprin could negatively impact the fetus some chemical way, but not nearly as negatively as Coumadin. That’s why they now said she should have been on Heprin, not Coumadin, so she could have gotten it out of her bloodstream more quickly before we attempted conception.
All of this was news to us. We hadn’t really meant to attempt conception. Ours was a very unplanned pregnancy.
So my wife had been on Coumadin per usual, not Heprin. What’s the big deal about Coumadin?
According to her University Medical Center friends on the phone, Coumadin was originally developed as a rat poison. Its chemical structure is also akin to Thalidomide, the ill-fated morning sickness drug that had caused so much grief and heartache in the early 1960s. Its use by pregnant women caused a frightening number of dead and deformed children. It was quickly pulled from the market as a result.
In retrospect, it’s remarkable to me that no medical person ever said anything to us about the inherent hazard of attempting to conceive while on Coumadin.
Would you knowingly conceive a baby with a woman who had Thalidomide or rat poison coursing through her veins?
Me neither, but I did.
Operative word is “knowingly.”
So, now what?
Well, according to my wife’s longtime hospital pal, the Chief Cardiac Surgeon at the University Medical Center who had performed her many surgeries, we needed to terminate this pregnancy immediately. There was no chance for a happy outcome.
None.
In the very unlikely event the child even made it to term, it would likely have to be institutionalized for the duration of its life, something potentially expensive and emotionally debilitating.
And on top of that, there was all the medical uncertainty surrounding the whole pregnancy/delivery process for my wife, the one with a pacemaker.
Official medical recommendation: Abort the baby.
As a Catholic, albeit none too good a one at the time, I couldn’t go along with that. As hard as it was, I concluded we needed to have the faith to “give it to God” and see what might happen. My wife bravely concurred.
In the mid-1970s, by the way, ultrasound technology was very much in its infancy. As a result, we really did have to rely on faith – not science. It was VERY hard for us to do, admittedly.
At this time in my life, I was self-employed and under-insured. I ended up taking a job with a major corporation just to get its excellent insurance benefits in order to cover our child’s possible post-birth expenses.
In July of 1977, against all odds and the prognostications of many well-meaning medical practitioners, God provided us with a perfect, beautiful little girl!
I don’t pretend to know how or why God made it happen. The smartest medical minds at the time could find no way that this miracle could come to pass – none – and yet somehow it did.
I only know that, thankfully, we chose life. We chose to “let go and let God,” and He did.
By the way, her mother knows all the answers, as she’s now in Heaven.
Over the last 40-some years, our beautiful daughter has given me such joy and so many wonderful memories of her journey from childhood into adulthood! She looks so much like her mother.
To have aborted her would have eliminated all of her magic from our lives. Absolutely unthinkable!
It would also have eliminated from the world the impact of her own life and purpose. Also, absolutely unthinkable!
Who knows how many people her life has impacted over the years, and continues to do so?
Today she has a Master’s in Education and lives and teaches in the Pacific Northwest. She and her loving husband have provided me with three wonderful, handsome, healthy grandsons, too!
***
When our little girl was about 5, I began to write her a story I had cleverly titled “SHADOW.” It was intended to be about her real-life kitten and some imaginary adventures her kitten Shadow might have undertaken. (The first several paragraphs of what is now the second chapter of SHADOW FOR LIFE are the very same ones I first wrote for her.)
Suddenly, right after I had written those initial paragraphs back then, my pencil began flying across the pages of my yellow pad!
The story was writing itself! I had no idea what I was writing!
My pencil eventually stopped and I was then able to read exactly what I’d written. I was shocked to discover it was not at all the story I had intended to write for my little girl. Apparently, however, it was the story I was supposed to write. Over the years, I have written and rewritten this essential story to make it not only the most compelling and persuasive story that I can, but one that hopefully is informative and entertaining as well.
According to recent statistics from the CDC, most (85%) abortions these days involved unmarried women in their 20s. “April,” the unmarried protagonist in this story, reflects those statistics.
***
Salient points to remember:
- Every life is important, each with a God-given purpose.
- Abortion truly is an unnatural act.
- Choose life. (Thankfully, it’s the choice your own mother made.)
- Always put your trust in God. Always.
We all have a purpose. Perhaps mine is sharing my story with you.