The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
FAITH AND PERSISTENCE DEFINE LEBLANC TWINS
Cornerstone’s Kaitlin, Kelsey overcome long odds starting with premature birth
For those who are strong in their faith like the LeBlanc family, the church serves as a central hub for miracles.
But every so often, it’s not just that revered building in which the miracles transpire.
Throughout the fall behind Christian Life Church in Mentor, the Cornerstone Christian girls soccer team steps onto the pitch for training sessions and home matches.
And every single time, a miracle occurs whether anyone realizes it or not – living, breathing and on the periphery of unlikely given all it entails.
It comes in the form of twins Kaitlin and Kelsey LeBlanc, whose narrative is so riveting their parents Jane and Michael have been encouraged often to share it far and wide.
“(Our mother) had a lady from our church tell her it would be a powerful testimony, that she should share it wherever she went,” Kaitlin said. “And that is what she did. She shared it with strangers in the mall, with all kinds of people. It really helps a lot of people out.”
Much like the soccer pitches tucked behind Christian Life Church, what “it” is covers a lot of ground. Because in its totality, “it” truly is a miracle.
Kaitlin and Kelsey were born prematurely Nov. 20, 2000, at 29 ½ weeks at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland.
Their mother had developed preeclampsia which, according to the Mayo Clinic, “is a pregnancy complication characterized by high blood pressure and signs of damage to another organ system, most often the liver and kidneys.
“Left untreated, preeclampsia can lead to serious — even fatal — complications.”
Kelsey was born weighing three pounds, and Kaitlin weighed just 2 ½ pounds.
Kelsey was deemed to be at risk for neocrotizing enterocolitis, or NECs for short, which the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles characterizes as a “devastating disease that affects mostly the intestine of premature infants. The wall of the intestine is invaded by bacteria, which cause local infection and inflammation that can ultimately destroy the wall of the bowel.”
Kaitlin tested positive for meningitis, “an inflammation of the membranes surrounding your brain and spinal cord,” the Mayo Clinic states.
As Jane and Michael and their church prayed for positive news, Kaitlin and Kelsey were retested, each thankfully testing negative on Round 2 for NECs and meningitis, respectively.
“We grew up hearing a lot about it,” Kaitlin said. “We’ve heard the story a bunch of times.”
On Jan. 11, 2001, Kaitlin and Kelsey came home nearly two months old with monitors. A year of followups commenced at a clinic for premature children.
Jane and Michael spoke to a doctor, who relayed, “Someone forgot to tell them that they were premature.”
At nine months, Kaitlin was diagnosed with strabismus, or eye misalignment. Her eyes floated upward and inward due to the lack of muscle control.
“Kelsey was always a really happy, smiling baby,” Kaitlin said. “She’d smile at you. She’d go right up to you.
“They said I always seemed more serious. They said I always seemed happy when I was really close to people, when I would see their face. So they kind of noticed something with my eyesight.”
According to the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, strabismus occurs in four percent of the U.S. population.
Her parents got her glasses through which Kaitlin could see out of special lenses with a small halfmoon shape, thus forcing the muscles to align.
“When we were younger, for me it was never really
that noticeable because I lived with her,” Kelsey said. “It just seemed normal. When she would take her glasses off, her one eye would always kind of roll up inward toward her nose.
“And to me, she just looked perfectly normal.”
Kaitlin had no 3D vision, and her eyesight caused challenges in everyday life.
“I would look, and think I saw the car far away – ‘Oh, I can cross now.’ - but they were very close,” Kaitlin said. “I’d go to cross the street, and (my mother) would hold me back. I’d be like, ‘Wait. Why are you holding me back? I looked.’ “
Kaitlin described everything seeming to look flat as if it was on a piece of paper. Jane would have to accompany Kaitlin on field trips because of her depth perception.
Stairs appeared to have no ascent or descent, so Kaitlin would use the railing, slowly going down one step at a time. Occasionally in school, Kelsey noted classmates would sometimes grow impatient and try to accelerate Kaitlin’s pace up and down stairs.
Kaitlin was given the option of surgery to correct the floating, but doctors noted it would not correct her lack of 3D vision.
“I told her, ‘Mom, I want this surgery,’ “Kaitlin said. “I said I know that God is going to heal my eyes. He’s already told me so. I want to do it. I think it’s time.”
In first grade, Kaitlin went to Cleveland Clinic’s Cole Eye Institute. The surgery was performed by Dr. Andreas Marcotty.
As the family sat in the waiting room, Kaitlin was called into surgery. She turned to her pastor, Don Knipp, and said, “Oh, that’s me. See you next Sunday.’ “
After the surgery, the floating was corrected – and something unexpected was found in followups over the next year: Kaitlin’s
3D vision started to return slowly as well.
Kelsey, as Kaitlin noted, had a “gift for all different kinds of sports.”
But with Kaitlin, because of her eyesight, sports were initially discouraged by doctors due to depth perception and hand-eye coordination.
“You’re twins, so you kind of get drawn into the same things when you’re younger,” Kaitlin said. “So I was like, ‘OK, she’s doing it. Why can’t I?’ “
Jane and Michael went out of their way to not use the eye condition as a deterrent or a discouragement with their young children.
“(My mother) didn’t want us to think like we couldn’t do something, like use it as an excuse or something,” Kaitlin said. “We grew up knowing about it.
“We just went on with life, figured stuff out, and she never let us use it as an excuse.”
Kaitlin and Kelsey began playing soccer together in a YMCA recreation league, then later Cornerstone in fourth grade and club and indoor soccer.
Kelsey pursued club soccer further, but Kaitlin and Kelsey became middle school and, later, high school teammates at Cornerstone.
With 72 girls in grades 10-12 according to OHSAA enrollment figures, the Patriots are one of the 30 smallest schools to field a girls soccer side in the state.
“I feel like, just being able to play with a lot of these girls since elementary school and middle school for most of them, you play with them your whole life,” Kelsey said. “Just to experience going through middle school and high school with the same team, since it’s not constant graduating seniors for most of the time, you can pretty much grow up with a lot of them and just establish
a team in that sense.
“There’s something more special when you can build it yourself.”
That applies to program building, but it also applies to building your own story.
At 16, Marcotty told Kaitlin she had nearly 20-20 vision.
As a senior in high school now, the young girl who was once believed to have no future in a sport like soccer because of her vision and her twin sister, once diagnosed as a preemie with meningitis, are healthy, happy and, together, leading the Patriots on the pitch.
“If (our parents) would have told (Kaitlin), ‘Oh, there’s a reason you can’t do it,’ she would have stopped trying or I can do this activity to this minimum, so I probably can’t go any farther,” Kelsey said. “For me, I didn’t even know the whole story with her. I just knew that naturally I was more athletic, and she had to work at it a little harder. But then, after we got older, they talked to us and said, ‘This is actually why she has a harder time.’
“It was actually cooler to look back at all the stuff she could do.”
On Nov. 20, the twins will celebrate their 18th birthdays.
It will also mark the anniversary of coming into this world prematurely, with all the health concern that comes along with it.
Kaitlin was asked how her vision is today, and in doing so, she may have instead summarized she and Kelsey’s narrative as well as anyone could.
For those who know it already, for those who heard their parents tell it or for those hearing it for the first time.
Today, against the odds, Kaitlin and Kelsey’s journey is a miracle for all to see.
“It’s not perfect,” Kaitlin said, “but it’s pretty close.”