She and her husband Jack were in for a difficult few months: MyPatientLine

When Karen Rynes gave birth to her twins four months early, she and her husband Jack were in for a difficult few months. The newborns were in very critical condition, and spent the next four and a half months in the NICU at Baylor University Medical Center.

Jack and Karen live in Dallas, but since they are originally from the Midwest and have lived all over the country, most of their contact with their concerned friends and loved ones was by telephone. This meant that, each day, after a long and emotionally taxing visit to the hospital, Jack and Karen returned home and had to field phone calls from family and friends who wanted updates on the status of the twins.

This need to repeat the day's news and events to multiple parties each day was emotionally taxing for the Rynes family, adding difficulty to their already stressful lives. After a tough day, the last thing they wanted was to relive the day's events multiple times over.

They set up an 800 number service with voicemail capabilities that would allow friends and family to call in for a recorded a message every day with the updated status of the twins. Family and friends could listen to these updates and leave their own messages of support and encouragement for Jack and Karen to hear at their leisure.

With the 800 number in place with help from Jack's company, Jaduka, tensions were eased for Jack and Karen. "We were now able to update friends daily and spend more time with our boys," said Karen. "The system also helped ease the minds of our friends and loved ones, who called in for updates without worrying about disturbing us."

Karen's 92-year-old grandmother also came to know the benefits of this system, as she never went to sleep without first calling and listening to the day's update.

Jack and Karen have made the service available to help other families. "We felt the need to help other families facing the unexpected trauma of an extended hospital stay for any purpose, whether due to premature babies, cancer, or even war injuries, so we created MyPatientLine," said Jack.

MyPatientLine is a phone service that offers an expanded version of the messaging system that Jack and Karen used to get through their difficult period. Some hospitals have already started offering it to their patients. The Connecticut Children's Medical Center, for example, plans to provide MyPatientLine to patients upon admission to their hospital.

In the same way that this service helped them, Jack and Karen hope that MyPatientLine can help others.

Advice: Consider MyPatientLine or other ways to update family members in an emergency.

Browse for similar stories in our index at the very bottom of this page, or read another preemie story.

Thanks to Nick Krefting for the interview of Karen.