{"id":6,"date":"2015-09-06T06:13:22","date_gmt":"2015-09-06T06:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gabee.org\/WP\/?page_id=6"},"modified":"2016-11-06T13:28:43","modified_gmt":"2016-11-06T13:28:43","slug":"gabrielles-story","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/gabee.org\/index.php\/gabrielles-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Gabrielle’s Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Unexpected Situation<\/strong>
\nWords by Erin Marie Heinert for ‘Area Woman<\/a>‘ magazine<\/em><\/p>\n

Their due date was October 14, 2014, but Lynze and Jeff Feller would meet their twin girls well before autumn arrived. They went to Lynze\u2019s doctor\u2019s office in Minot, North Dakota, for a routine ultrasound in August. It detected some fluid had built up around Baby B. As the staff looked into the severity of the situation, Lynze was told she could go home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t have a good feeling when we left,\u201d remembers Lynze. \u201cIt was a little scary not knowing what was going on. But then we got the call to come back right away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lynze and Jeff drove back to the hospital where they learned their girls needed to be delivered as soon as possible. Their doctor said they would be taken by plane to Sanford Children’s in Fargo. When Lynze questioned if Mayo would be a better choice, their doctor said Sanford in Fargo is a great hospital and the extra time it would take to fly to Rochester is too risky.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were scared, but trusted our doctors decision to send us to Fargo,\u201d says Jeff. \u201cSo we went to Sanford Children\u2019s and within an hour of arriving, Lynze was rushed in for an emergency C-section.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Baby B, who was Gabrielle, was born, she didn\u2019t make any noise at all,\u201d says Lynze. \u201cThey just rushed her out of the room. But when Hancee came out, I heard her cry for a split second and I knew that, for at least that moment, she was OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reality sets in<\/strong><\/em>
\nHancee was a typical preemie with issues that could be handled with time and treatment in the neonatal intensive care unit until she grew stronger. She would spend a total of 56 days in the hospital before being released. Gabrielle, however, was on the opposite spectrum of care needs. Gabrielle\u2019s lung and heart functions were extremely poor. She had Down syndrome, leukemia and issues with most of her organs. She needed maximum support.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were very up front with us,\u201d says Jeff, \u201cWe sat down with her care team and Dr. Bellas would walk us through the concerns and what they could do for her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t want to give the parents any false hope,\u201d says Dr. Bellas. \u201cThey were on board to give Gabrielle care that was beneficial to her, to make her comfortable. And she was a heroic little girl. She pulled through and improved a lot, but we reached a point where no additional care could be given to her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moving forward<\/strong><\/em>
\nThe Fellers decided that whatever was left of Gabrielle\u2019s short life shouldn\u2019t be spent in the hospital. They rented an apartment in Fargo so they could remain close to the team at Sanford Children\u2019s, and after 98 days in the NICU, Gabrielle was stable enough to leave.<\/p>\n

The Fellers spent a few weeks together as a family, but the time went too quickly and at the beginning of December, Gabrielle began to deteriorate. She returned to Sanford Children\u2019s Hospital where she passed away a few days later in the pediatric intensive care unit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are so grateful to the team at Sanford Children\u2019s for the type of care they gave our girls,\u201d says Lynze. \u201cThey were able to take care of our children when we couldn\u2019t and we are so thankful for that. They received impeccable care and it was the best we could have asked for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thanks to the team at Sanford Children\u2019s, Hancee is doing great. She just celebrated her first birthday (August 2015) and had a few special guests at her party.<\/p>\n

\u201cA few of the nurses from Sanford Children\u2019s and some of the people we had met in Fargo actually came to Minot to see her,\u201d says Lynze. \u201cThey really had become our friends after all that time together and for them to come out to her party was just extremely special and says a lot about the team there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Unexpected Situation Words by Erin Marie Heinert for ‘Area Woman‘ magazine Their due date was October 14, 2014, but Lynze and Jeff Feller would meet their twin girls well before autumn arrived. They went to Lynze\u2019s doctor\u2019s office in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabee.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabee.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabee.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabee.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabee.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/gabee.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27,"href":"https:\/\/gabee.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions\/27"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabee.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}