February 23, 2000
TWICE BLESSED:
Wedgwood boy aided by new fetal surgery
___By Marv Knox
___Editor
JOEL GALEY and his mom, Leslie.
___FORT WORTH--Joel Galey's mom and dad prayed for a miracle. God gave them two.
___To watch Joel crawl, feed himself cereal and laugh at his big brothers, you'd never know he's a redheaded, blue-eyed miracle. But the 1-year-old's health represents only half the miracles his parents, Leslie and Kevin Galey, have experienced in his young life.
___Leslie was 18 weeks pregnant with their third child when she visited her obstetrician for a routine sonogram late in the summer of 1998.
___"You go in anticipating everything's going to be great," noted Kevin, staff counselor and minister of community needs at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth. "You just want to find out the sex of the baby."
___That was the easy part. The sonogram showed they had a boy. But tests also showed "an anomaly on an X-ray," Kevin recalled. Leslie's doctor referred them to Harris Hospital in Fort Worth, where they met with specialists who confirmed their fears.
___The baby had spina bifida. "That's where the back doesn't completely close over the spinal cord," Kevin explained. "Ninety-five percent of children with spina bifida will not be normal kids who can run and jump and play."
___Worse, many spina bifida children endure hydrocephalus, or water on the brain; bowel and bladder problems; clubbed feet; and numerous other physical difficulties, he added. Usually, afflicted children must endure numerous surgeries. And the malady consigns their parents to 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week care, often involving exacting medical procedures.
___One of their doctors offered the Galeys a quick solution.
___"He told Leslie: 'You're only 18 weeks along. If you'd like, we can terminate the pregnancy,'" Kevin remembered.
___"That's not an option!" Leslie responded, stressing the couple's strong conviction that children--even in the womb--are gifts from God, no matter their physical or mental condition.
___Stunned, but determined to do everything possible to help their child, the Galeys turned to prayer.
___"We asked God why this was happening," Kevin remembered. "But we believed God could do a miracle, to fix our baby's back or change the way we feel about and respond to it. So, we prayed for a miracle--either heal him or change our feelings of fear."
___Immediately, the Galeys also set out to help God answer their prayers.
___They received a second medical opinion, which confirmed the baby's condition. They also started asking what could be done, specifically homing in on the possibility of fetal surgery.
___The first reports regarding surgery were discouraging. A doctor told them some pre-natal surgeries had been performed on spina bifida babies, but the results were not promising.
___"So, we decided that's the way it's going to be," Kevin acknowledged.
___Then, they set out to help God answer their prayer for changing their own fears and feelings.
___"We read everything we could find about spina bifida," Leslie said. "It's scary. It's one thing after another: Kidneys could fail. Most SB children have to have a catheter, and an infection could be fatal. Most have to have a shunt to drain fluid from the brain. And you have to be aware of all the conditions and all the possible problems all the time.
___"I wasn't really bothered by the prospect of my child living his whole life in a wheelchair and the inconvenience of raising him. But I was terrified that I might do something to hurt him, that I might not be observant."
___Faced with such daunting prospects, the Galeys continued to ask God to comfort and guide them. "We prayed," Kevin said. "Churches all over the country prayed for us."
___The first hint of an answer came in a phone call from Leslie's mother, who had a friend who had seen an Internet article about fetal spina bifida surgery conducted at Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville, Tenn.
___The article explained that spina bifida babies take two "hits" that harm them, Leslie reported. First is the ailment itself and the problems related to the malformation of the spine. Second is a compounding set of problems--because the spine is exposed to amniotic fluid and to "bumping around" in the uterus, the baby's health is further jeopardized as it matures before birth. So, Vanderbilt doctors were operating on fetuses to cover the spine and reduce the risks of increased spinal damage.
___"For us, this was a sign that God might want us to pursue this procedure," Kevin said.
___They sent an e-mail letter to Joseph Bruner, the Vanderbilt surgeon who had performed the operations, explaining their situation. Soon, Bruner called them back. He explained why two of the first four babies who received the procedure died and that 16 others had survived. He answered all their questions. And he offered to perform the surgery Oct. 30, 1998--in just two weeks.
___The Galeys consulted their Fort Worth doctors. One particularly expressed reservations about Leslie undergoing the surgery on the baby only to endure another surgery--Caesarian section--to deliver the baby.
___That was not a major concern to her. "As soon as I was confident I wouldn't put him at greater risk, I was ready."
___They traveled to Nashville, where they spent most of a week talking to doctors, social workers and other specialists. One was an ethicist, who asked them, "Your baby is not at a life-or-death risk, so why are you willing to do this?"
___"We said we felt God led us to this place," Kevin said. "If as parents we could improve our baby's health and prevent years of surgeries, we wanted to."
___So, with Bruner as the lead surgeon, doctors and nurses operated on Leslie and her baby. (They conducted a surgery very similar to the one depicted on page 1 of the Dec. 1, 1999, Baptist Standard.)
___Bruner lifted Leslie's uterus from her body. Then his team located the baby, opened the uterus, prepared the baby for surgery and moved the baby to line up with the hole in her uterus. Another team closed the hole in the baby's back. Finally, Bruner's team closed the uterus, returned the amniotic fluid and saline solution to the placenta, replaced the uterus and completed the surgery.
___Their optimism was well founded. Leslie carried Joel until 1:10 a.m., Monday, Dec. 14, 1998. He was seven weeks premature, but he weighed in at 5.5 pounds and looked good from the start.
___"We could see immediately his spine was covered," Kevin said. "He always breathed on his own; he did well, and they took him off all monitors by the end of the week. He had good bowel and bladder control, no club feet, and his legs were strong."
___Joel crawls and sits up, although "he's still a little bit behind" in his development, his mother reported. "There are still a lot of unknowns about his future. We don't know exactly what he will do. But I'm thrilled."
___As far as his mom and dad are concerned, Joel is a miracle. God used some of the world's finest physicians to heal their son, and he has a good chance of living a full and healthy life.
___But they also believe God answered their other prayer for a miracle--to change their fear to confidence and transform their doubts to firm assurance.
___That miracle was borne by prayer, but also by looking squarely into the face of tragedy and trusting God.
___"Kevin just knew God was going to heal Joel," Leslie remembered. "He's an optimist; I'm realistic. It's not that I thought God couldn't or wouldn't heal Joel, but I just didn't know if that was what God had in mind.
___"A lot of children are born with birth defects. Why should my child be healed?"
___She still struggled with one of the hardest questions of all time: Why do bad things happen to innocent people, like little babies?
___"God gave man a choice, and the world fell," she said, describing the original sin committed by Adam and Eve, the first humans, and committed by every person in every generation since.
___The world is a fallen, imperfect place. "That's what caused Joel's defect," she asserted.
___Some people told her, "God doesn't give you anything you can't handle," and she dismisses that platitude as bad theology. "That's not biblical," she said. "I couldn't handle thinking God caused my child to have a birth defect. God loves my child more than I do. God wouldn't inflict that on a child."
___She takes comfort in the Apostle Paul's assurance in the book of Romans, that "the world groans and God suffers," just as people do.
___"I believe God walks with us. God cries with us. God gave us a choice, which we must have to fully love God." And a broken world is the price people pay for that choice and that freedom--and that loving relationship with God.
___The Galeys have experienced the truth of that lesson twice: Not just with Joel, but also from Sept. 15, 1999, when Larry Gene Ashbrook shot his way into their church, killing seven people and injuring seven others. Kevin was one of the injured, and he's still recovering from his bullet wounds.
___People have asked the Galeys if the illness of their son and the Wedgwood shooting have shaken their faith.
___"Just because it gets dark at night doesn't mean you don't wait for the light," Kevin said. "I rest in the fact that the sun will come up--everything will make sense someday."
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