Rocky Hill’s Monica Lange takes her cameras inside CHOP
By Anthony Stoeckert
A local filmmaker is taking viewers inside CHOP.
Monica Lange of Rocky Hill is the writer, producer and director of “Twice Born: Stories From the Special Delivery Unit,” a three-part series airing on PBS stations WHYY and WNET, beginning March 31. The series shares stories of families whose children undergo fetal surgery at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment and its special delivery unit.
Ms. Lange has been a TV producer for 25 years and has worked for Discovery Communications, Bill Moyers and WNET. She has made previous films on health and family topics, such as autism and conjoined twins, and her interest in sharing CHOP’s story began when she started to learn about fetal surgery.
”I’m always looking for stories in that realm,” Ms. Lange says. “I had known about this, and a couple of years ago I found out the Howard Hughes Medical Institute had set aside a huge amount of money to develop programing around subjects having to do with health and science.”
”Twice Born” is the first series to be granted access to the groundbreaking hospital and the special delivery unit where surgeries are performed on babies while they are still inside their mothers’ womb. Ms. Lange says she and her crew spent 14 months with the families whose stories are told. The film shares the experiences of expecting parents as they make some of the most difficult decisions a person could make: whether to repair birth defects via pre-natal surgery at the risk of losing their children.
The first episode introduces viewers to Dr. Scott Adzick, surgeon-in-chief at CHOP’s center for field diagnosis and treatment, and Dr. Holly Hedrick, who attempts to remove a tumor from a fetus. The parents we meet are Lesly, a 23-year-old single mom whose unborn child has the tumor, and Shelly and Bobby, a couple whose unborn child has spina bifida.
”It’s structured like a drama,” Ms. Lange says of the series. “Some of the stories are only in one episode, but the main stories thread throughout, so they start in hour one and in order to find out what happens to those people, you need to hang in until the end of hour three.”
Obviously, experiencing these stories was emotional for Ms. Lange and her crew.
”We go through it with them, we feel it with them,” she says. “We become very close to these people, and they’re our friends now. We’ve been through more with them than even their own families because we’re there all the time, or a lot of the time. Their families come in and out. So what it’s like is just like any human experience. You feel it. You become close to these people and you feel their pain and you feel their joy.”
When asked if there was one moment from the series that stood out for her, Ms. Lange says she wasn’t able to do that.
”You travel a long distance with these people and there are a lot of highs and lows,” she says. “I can’t point to any one moment. But they are dramatic stories and there are a lot of times where we felt things very strongly.”
Prior to this project, Ms. Lange knew of CHOP and its reputation, but hadn’t featured the hospital in any of her work documentary work before.
”I went and met with them and I realized that this could be a fabulous series because the personalities were there, the knowledge was there, the expertise was there, and the patients came from all over the country,” she says. “It’s a vortex of all these different things that go into making a good film.”
The series covers the time frame beginning in the fall of 2013 through late last year. The final turnaround was done quickly because, Ms. Lange, says, PBS stations wanted to get the show on the air.
”That’s why I feel I need to sleep for the next three months,” she says.
”Twice Born: Stories From the Special Delivery Unit” will air on WHYY (Channel 12) and WNET (Channel 13) March 31, April 7 and April 14 at 8 p.m.. The first episode will be rerun on WNET April 2 at 1 a.m. and on WHYY April 5 at 9 p.m.