Doctor Connects Premature Family

By Kelly Garrison
Features Editor

Jose Perez. Where had she seen that name before?

That was Rebecca Lange’s first thought, she said, as she glanced at the type on her new baby granddaughter’s incubator. Onnie Bomgaars, one of her twin daughters, had just delivered her first child six weeks early at the Miller Children’s Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) — nearly 30 years had passed since Lange’s premature twin daughters barely survived infancy in the same facility.

Then the doctor arrived. His eyes looked familiar, Lange said, but she couldn’t figure out where she had seen him before.

“When he came in, I looked at him and thought, ‘This cannot be the same doctor,’” she said. “No doctor would stay this long.”

Studying his features, she asked him if he remembered Shawna and Onnie, known around the NICU at that time as the Damron twins. That’s when she realized he was the same man who helped save her daughters’ lives 28 years ago with experimental medicine and technology.

“They had told me if I was lucky, I would be able to bring home one baby,” Lange recalled.

“Two doctors, including Dr. Perez, gave me encouragement. Onnie got better a little faster, and Shawna had some problems.”

Both twins had been born 13 weeks early and weighed less than three pounds each. Perez, who was part of the Miller Children’s Hospital Neonatology fellowship program, had helped treat them for lung complications.

“At that time, all they had was experimenting,” Lange said of premature neonatal care. “They told me they had found a surgeon who wanted to try an experimental procedure on Shawna, and I reluctantly signed the paperwork. Perez told me, ‘You’re doing the right thing. If it doesn’t help you or your child, it’ll help other people in the future.’”

Her labor, she explained, had been induced unintentionally when she tripped and fell walking up the stairs to her apartment. An experimental drug given to her to stimulate growth in the babies’ undeveloped lungs had worked to no avail, so she had sought more help.

“They said, ‘We don’t know what it will do to your body or to the kids,’” she said.

But she had no other choice, and within hours, she underwent an emergency caesarean section.

While her babies clung to their lives in the NICU, Lange said she had little hope in the procedure that Perez and the other staff had recommended. Today, now that she has come full circle, she said she has confidence that her granddaughter — Kaitlyn Grace — is getting the best care possible.

“It’s just a miracle,” she said. “We couldn’t have asked for anyone else. It’s so comforting knowing that Onnie’s got the same doctors and nurses that cared for her also caring for her baby.”

“The procedure was never done before,” Perez said in a press release. “It has made an impact on me. It stands out because something special happened.”

Doctors have yet to estimate when Kaitlyn can return home, but Bomgaars said she’s making the best of the situation. The group reunited last Monday at the hospital to reminisce about their common past.

“My mom always told me there was a strong possibility that I couldn’t have children,” Bomgaars said. “That’s what she was told, too. It’s exciting for me to know I’ve been able to grow up and do just fine — and that the same doctor is taking care of me and my baby.”