Parents of twins get helping hand
A couple of premature Kalispell twins survived a hard-fought battle for their lives during a complicated pregnancy and were welcomed June 30 into the waiting arms of their grateful parents.
About a month after Matt and Angela Freeman discovered they were having twins, the fetuses developed a life-threatening condition called Twin-to-Twin Tranfusion Syndrome, in which one of the two receives the majority of in utero nourishment, causing the other to become undernourished.
Angela needed immediate surgery in April in Kirkland, Wash., but the couple didn’t have a car to make the trip. Matt sold everything he could and then put down a loan on a beater car to get to Washington.
The four-hour surgery was successful, yet the identical twins were soon facing more complications. One of them had ripped an opening in the sac separating the two. Now they were at risk for umbilical cord entanglement, cord compression and unequal nutrition distribution. There was a significant danger that one would live and one would die. Angela would need continuous medical supervision and monitoring for the remainder of her pregnancy.
After Angela gave birth to Mary Jane Alice and Harley Rose — “beautiful, rock star twin girls,” as their father put it — the next hurdle the couple faced was bringing preemie babies home to a small trailer with no air conditioning in the middle of the summer.
Matt made calls to numerous churches and organizations trying to find a unit that could be donated to them, to no avail. Then someone heard of their need and called Susan Kunda at Agency on Aging, who in turn contacted Tom Murphy at Flathead Industries.
Though the Agency on Aging typically focuses on seniors, Kunda pulled strings to get them an air conditioning unit. Murphy arranged for a work crew from Flathead Industries that delivered and installed it in their trailer on July 30 just as the Flathead was hitting daytime highs in the upper 80s and 90s.
Flathead Industries also donated baby clothes for the twins.
After all the trials they’d been through, when asked by Murphy what the plan was moving forward with the twins, Matt humbly replied, “To be a good mom and dad. Family is first.”
Bob and Anna Rose Jacobson of San Diego were in town enjoying a dinner at Hops Downtown Grill earlier this month.
While waiting for their table they chatted with a few other folks.
After their meal Bob gave his credit card to the waiter but was told that someone had paid their tab. Astonished, the couple asked the waiter to convey their appreciation, but they never found out who paid their bill.
The Jacobsons would like to know who it was and thank them for their kindness so they asked the Inter Lake to publish their email address — jacobsonr@cox.net — so they could get in touch with them.
The anonymous gift was all the more sweet because the Jacobsons were celebrating their 45th anniversary that night, yet never told a soul.
Community editor Carol Marino may be reached at 758-4440 or by email at community@dailyinterlake.com.