Friday, June 30, 2017

Prayers please - and an important message

Dear friends and family, and readers
We are in need of your urgent prayers. A few weeks ago, we were overjoyed to discover that we are expecting our first child. However, an early ultrasound is suggesting the possibility of a tubal/ectopic pregnancy. While we are waiting for further test results to confirm this, we ask that you pray for God's mercy and if necessary a miracle. We are especially asking the intercession of St. Anthony Galvão, who is a very powerful intercessor for mothers who's babies are at risk.
We were initially planning on keeping the news of the pregnancy within the family, knowing that Rachel has a higher risk of miscarriage from her PCOS, but as we said, we urgently need your prayers. So far, while her pregnancy symptoms have been fairly mild, she has not had any definite signs of miscarriage, so we have hope.

There is another reason, however, that I wanted to share this. Before this diagnosis, we had only a vague idea of what an ectopic pregnancy actually meant. We knew that it meant the baby wasn't where it was supposed to be, and that most of the time it would have implanted in the mother's Fallopian tube, before it got to where it belonged in the uterus. We knew that if the baby grew too big and ruptured the tube, the hemorrhaging put the mother's life at great risk. We knew, vaguely, that because of this risk surgery removing the tube was morally permissible, even though it meant that the baby would die as a result; so long as the purpose of the operation is to remove the "diseased" tube and not the baby.
What we didn't know is that there have been successful cases published as far back as 1915 of doctors who, generally chancing upon the ectopic pregnancy during another surgery, were able to move the baby from the tube to the uterus. We also didn't know that these babies have, in rare cases where they have survived a rupture probably unnoticed, have been able to reattach themselves to another part of the abdominal cavity. The possibility is there for a procedure to be developed for the baby to be moved from tube to uterus. The number of advances in medicine in the last 100 years is astounding, yet so far as we can tell the research isn't being done for a heartbreaking pregnancy complication that is right now fatal for almost every baby, and dangerous to the mothers. Ectopic pregnancy occurs in about 1-2% of all pregnancies. Only about 50% end in natural miscarriage. While morally we are forced to allow the unintended death of these babies without an alternative, we need to be advocating for a better option. Even if the chance of a transfer from the tube to the uterus being successful is low, don't we have a moral obligation to give it that chance? And didn't every complicated medical procedure that is now even routine once start as one with a very low chance of success?
I admit, I am not a doctor, or even a nurse. I don't know all of the complications in a surgery, I don't know the difficulties of research, and honestly I don't know much at this point of the research done outside of a couple of published (medical journal) articles. But I do know that we live in a culture where a baby can be killed for any reason, so long as it hasn't left the womb. A baby's life isn't considered valuable until it is born or someone wants it, so I can see why there would be little call to research this.
We hope and pray that our baby is safe and healthy where it belongs - and beg you to pray for us for the same. If you or someone you know is a surgeon who would be willing to attempt the experimental transfer, should it come down to that, please contact us. Also, if you are aware of any more information on this, please contact us. Finally, now that this issue has come to our attention, we feel we need to raise awareness of both the situation and the importance of finding a better medical solution. Please share this. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Bernard and Rachel Slobodnik
6/30/2017
Updates will be posted to my blog www.theramblingamateur.blogspot.com.
Please join our prayers asking for the intercession of St. Anthony Galvão http://www.tfp.org/he-always-held-his-soul-in-his-hands-the-story-of-saint-anthony-of-saint-anne-galvao/
One of the sites that presented the possibility of the transfer from tube to uterus: http://www.personhoodinitiative.com/ectopic-personhood.html

The journal letter detailing the process used: http://www.ajog.org/article/0002-9378%2890%2990794-8/pdf

Another case: http://books.google.com/books?id=5aUCAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA579&ots=Q6ngGXyT-a&dq=transplant%20ectopic%20pregnancy%20to%20uterus&pg=PA578#v=onepage&q=%22transplantations%20of%20ectopic%20pregnancy%20from%20fallopian%22%20%22tube%20to%20cavity%20of%20uterus%22&f=false

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