Beachwood Twins In NJ At Last Thanks To Community's Support

BEACHWOOD, NJ — A week ago, while many parents were tucking little ones into bed for the night, Sue Morales and her husband, Ty Krean, stood on the tarmac at Teterboro Airport, watching their twin sons being transferred to a pair of waiting ambulances for the trip to Newark Beth Israel Hospital.

Twenty-four weeks after the couple departed for Houston in May in search of a surgery to protect the lives of their unborn babies, the entire family was back in New Jersey — a trip home made possible by an outpouring of love, support and generosity by both friends and strangers.

Sue and the twins, Wyatt and Holden, made the trip from Texas Children's Hospital in Houston on Oct. 24, flying aboard a private jet arranged by Lakewood resident and paramedic Sim Shain, president of Paraflight EMS, an air medical transport company based in Lakewood.

"They landed! They flew today!" family friend Melissa Decker said in a message that night. The trip back to New Jersey had been a long one, but no less arduous than what the family has faced already.

The twins and their triplet brother, Sawyer,were born at 24 weeks' gestation as doctors at the Houston hospital were preparing Sue for in utero surgery to separate the blood supply of Wyatt and Holden, who had twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. The triplets were a wonderful surprise; when Sue first learned she was pregnant with the couple's third child, she was expecting it to be just one baby. In a matter of weeks, however, she learned she was carrying fraternal twins, and was stunned yet again to learn she was carrying triplets because one fetus had split into two.

When doctors monitoring the pregnancy realized the identical twins were not developing at the same rate and diagnosed the twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, they sent the couple to Houston, where the boys were born May 4. Because they were born so prematurely, Sue and the babies had to remain in Texas while Ty returned home to work and care for the couple's older sons, Aidan and Oliver.

The weeks since then have been a roller-coaster of tears and prayers, heartbreak and hopes. There was the death of Sawyer less than two weeks later, on May 16, who succumbed to complications of his prematurity. There were multiple challenges as Wyatt and Holden slowly improved.

By early October, Wyatt and Holden were reaching the point they could be moved back to New Jersey, which would allow Sue to spend time with all of her family, and allow Ty to spend more time with the twins. Decker said family and friends searched for possible ways to get the family home. A scramble to arrange a trip through a charity air ambulance organization fell apart days before the scheduled trip home.

And that's where Sim Shain and Paraflight EMS came in. Shain, a member of the Orthodox Jewish community in Lakewood who also works as a paramedic, offered to help the Kreans by providing the plane, the necessary medical personnel and coordinating the transfer efforts. All the family had to pay for was the cost of the fuel, which was roughly $23,000. Donors big and small chipped in to help and got the family most of the way to the $23,000, Decker said. The rest they paid through credit cards, she said.

Shain, a paramedic with MONOC, also volunteers with the Lakewood Hatzollah and is a life member with the Howell Township Volunteer EMS squad. He arranged for two Hatzollah ambulances to be in place at Teterboro to transport Sue and the babies to Beth Israel.

"It's our privilege to be able to give back," Shain said as preparations were being made to bring the babies and Sue home. "I'm passionate about EMS and I'm passionate about flying. We've done a lot of medical escorts (of people in need)."

"What you give is what you get," Shain said. Just days later, Shain gave the family the gift of being home and being together.

Decker this week said that being home has been a huge relief for Sue, who has to return to work at her job as a teacher in the Toms River Regional School District in December, and for Ty.

The support from the community has simply overwhelmed them, Decker said. "They are just so deeply touched by how wonderful everyone has been to them during these past months," she said.

"I don't know how we'll ever be able to pay that back," Ty Krean said as the arrangements to bring the boys home were being finalized. "We'll just be trying to pay it forward."

Decker had a message for everyone who has helped and given donations to the family:

"Thank you so much for helping us get our Jersey Girl and our pumpkins home!"

Decker is arranging further help for the family through delivering donated meals as they spend time with the twins at the hospital in Newark. You can contact her by private message on Facebook to help. She said the GoFundme account remains active for those wishing and willing to help with the significant medical bills for Wyatt and Holden.

Photos provided by Ty Krean, used with permission