Emily Stark
Benefitting Step Up
In 2001, Emily Stark was newly married to the man of her dreams and pregnant shortly thereafter - with twins! And then a follow-up ultrasound appointment brought a shocking revelation. The twin girls were conjoined at the base of the spine. Emily and her husband were left with a difficult decision. Best case? They would be separated with no lingering effects. Worst case - the girls would be paralyzed from the connection point down. In this episode, Emily talks about making choices with no certainty of the outcome, why we are not meant to be in this world solo, and her greatest lesson of listening to your gut.
Wise Words
“And we went walking down and she started to kind of scan my stomach and she said, see this little whole circle? It’s a head. And then my husband started to scream, there’s two, there’s two. And I turned to my husband and I said, “Are they Siamese?”
“And then he finally turned the screen off and he looked at my husband and I and he said they’re conjoined somewhere in the lower region. I’ll get you a little bit from the medical journal, but your babies are joined, and that is the moment I can tell you. I just tuned how I looked at the ceiling and I thought, you’re an idiot. I’m going to get off this table. I’m going to jump up and down. We’re going to lay back down and you’re going to do the ultrasound again. And you will see they moved apart. And so, I kind of tuned out my husband over from there communicating with the doctor and he had this huge medical journal and he came back with a very small paragraph and it said, conjoined twins.
“We said, give us the quality of life of them. That’s what we need to know. And he showed us all these images of them, and they were joined in the lower region. They told us the best case is that you could separate them, and they would have no lingering effects whatsoever.”
“And worst case, they would be paralyzed from where they were joint down. Wow. And when he said to me, we kept saying, give us the quality of life. And that’s that was very pivotal for us, because as soon as he said, if that is all you wanted to know, we didn’t need to do an MRI. The quality of their life is up to you, two. You have the power to give them a great quality of life. And when he did that, it took I felt so helpless by that point. But he gave me my power back and I knew, I would do this. I could give them a great quality of life, whether they were paralyzed or not.”
“And my husband and I just stood there in the intensive care unit and I looked over at him and tears were rolling down his face and I said ‘what’s wrong?’ And he said I don’t know how to hold just one baby.”
“We need it, we need it to survive. We were not meant to be in this world solo. And being an introvert to myself, like I’m a true introvert. But I’m still meant to be in connection with people.
“I think my greatest lesson really has been listening to your gut. Your answers are really inside there if you quiet your mind and hear, but not listening to it.”
Links
Facebook: @emily.elizabeth.stark
Instagram: @starksparknow