(Sumter) July 14, 2004 - Linda and Greta have been
friends since high school.
The extraordinary friendship would dramatically
change both of their lives. Greta touched Linda's
swollen stomach when she was pregnant with twins. Greta
says her friend would give birth to the babies, but
wouldn't keep them for her own, "We started trying to
have kids and it wasn't happening.
It was life's cruel joke for Greta. She always wanted
children, but her hopes were crushed when a doctor
discovered she had uterine cancer, "He said, 'You're
going to be fine, because this is 95% curable.' I didn't
care. I could never have kids you know. I would rather
have them tell me that I was dying than tell me I
wouldn't have kids."
Greta says things seemed hopeless until Linda came to
the rescue, "She called in January of 2003 and said,
'I'm not getting any younger. We are going to do this,
we're doing it now. Let's do it.'"
Doctors injected three embryos into Linda with eggs
salvaged from Greta's uterus and her husband's sperm.
Two of them took.
After about eight months, with complications
including a month of bed rest, Greta stood amazed in the
delivery room as her best friend gave birth to her twin
sons, Wyatt and Dalton, "You stare at them the first
couple of nights and you don't sleep, because I just
wanted to look at them."
Linda herself is a wife and mother of three. Her
sacrificial gift of choosing to have even more children
for someone else is teaching her two-year-old son, Lee,
valuable lessons, 'You know, sometimes we have to think
of other people. We can't think of ourselves so much."
Greta says doctors caught her cancer early and while
they did have to perform a hysterectomy, doctors feel
confident that they got the cancer and have given Greta
a clean bill of health.
