Reverie’s story
Reverie’s story
Reverie Productions is named after my second child. In late 2007 my wife, Angela, became pregnant with our unplanned second child. While it was not optimal timing, we embraced the pregnancy. Then, the week 18 sonogram showed that our child had not developed kidneys. This condition, bilateral renal agenesis, is lethal. It greatly reduced amniotic fluid, leading to severe malformation of the limbs and chest. This in turn prevents normal lung development, leading to a painful post-natal death, assuming he made it to term.
We made the painful decision to proceed with an induced labor termination. Our son was stillborn on March 2, 2008. We named him Reverie, as he was our little forever daydream. In the painful period following his passing, our doctors worked to find an explanation for what happened.
Several months later I was diagnosed with a very rare genetic disorder called BORSD (branchiootorenal spectrum disorder) which affects fetal development of the ears, face, neck, and kidneys. A major feature of the disorder is hearing loss. I’ve been hearing impaired since childhood, and had been wearing at least one hearing aid since 7th grade. I had always known my hearing loss was genetic, but until this diagnosis, I’d never known the exact cause.
As it turns out, this condition is geneitcally dominant, meaning I had a 50-50 chance of passing it on to each of my children. It turned out Reverie’s big brother, Alex, had the condition as well. In his case, his ears were asymmetrical, he had mild hearing loss, and we discovered he had a kidney condition that needed to be monitored and required a referral to a pediatric kidney specialist; the closest one to our home in Reno, NV, was three hours away in Oakland, CA.
At the time I received my diagnosis, my wife and I were pregnant with our third child. When rejoiced when we saw normal kidney development, but disocvered at his birth that I had passed on the affected gene three times. Among other conditions, Nick had bilateral microtia — that is, he has no outer ears. He also lacked middle ears (ear drums and ear bones) on both sides. This meant he was functionally deaf, though we knew within days that his inner ear was intact. With a functional inner ear, Nick would be a candidate for bone anchored hearing aids (BAHAs) allowing him to hear more or less normally.
When Nick was about two years of age, a colleague took me aside. He wanted to share with me how he and other members of our department had been talking, and were very impressed with how my wife and I were handling our challenges. Between losing one child and dealing with two hearing impaired children, he wanted to let us know what an amazing job everyone thought we were doing. I was a biology professor. I understood the genetics and physiology of our condition even better than some of our doctors. My wife was a doctor of audiology. She understood the hearing physiology and corrective options, again, sometimes better than our doctors. Between us, we had knowledge unavailable to most families in our situation.
It was from that realization that the spirit of Reverie Productions was born. There are times in life where science literacy makes all the difference in the world. It’s not just essential knowledge for clinicians and researchers. In some moments where science literacy has life-and-death consequences. For farmers. For business owners. For families.
Our mission is “To empower innovation in science education by producing top-quality STEAM instructional media, and by fostering community engagement through collaboration in the design and development processes.” This is for the benefit of our collective community and in loving memory of the daydream who transformed my life seventeen-years ago and who continues to do so today.
— Steve C. Schenk, January 2026
(l to r) Nick, Steve, Alex and Angela
The Schenk Famlily, November 2025