Peaceful Day and Hard Conversations

Kathryn’s aunt and uncle served us again last night. They stayed at our house last night with Caleb and Joel, allowing Pat, Kathryn’s mom, to be here at the hospital. She stayed through the night by her grandson’s bedside and loved it. In fact, amazingly, after a nap today, she is coming to do it again. This gives Kathryn and I some peaceful and much-needed hours of sleep knowing that our Little Mystery is being loved on.

There is little change in Samuel’s status today. His oxygen saturation dropped 10% earlier today, and he had some bad blood gas numbers. They tried to compensate by increasing his ventilation. This helped him recover from most of the drop. The ventilation increases are getting harder and riskier to do: he is on the oscillator (the strongest ventilator) receiving 100% oxygen (5x as concentrated as what you and I breathe) at settings normally reserved for a 2-3 year old. Most of his numbers are a little bit worse today than they were yesterday.

Kathryn and I have had relatively peaceful hearts for most of the day. Heavy, but peaceful. This, once again, is the grace and kindness of God. We know that He is near to us. Kathryn reminded me this morning that what we will want to remember is having enjoyed these moments with our son. I needed to hear it. I was overwhelmed and struggling.

When we weren’t reading to, praying with, singing to, or talking to Samuel today, most of the rest of our time was been spent in very difficult end of life conversations – gathering information, understanding our options, discussing and praying through them. We’ve both remarked that we can’t believe that we even have to have these conversations or make these decisions. Never in our worst-case scenarios did we imagine this. I am so grateful for my wife and our marriage. I can’t imagine going through this with someone that I did not love, like, and respect. She is an amazing woman, wife, and mother. We continue to pray for a miraculous healing, but find that more and more we are praying for some of these other pressing matters. Please join us. Please pray for wisdom, unity, and discernment for Kathryn and I. Please pray that the Lord would go before us in all of these matters. Our greatest desire is that, should Samuel, in fact, die, we be able to hold him in his final moments and usher Him into the Lord’s care. Kathryn has only held him for one minute when he was first born. I have never held him. We crave the opportunity and desire such a memory.

A very dear friend of ours stopped by unexpectedly today. Truthfully, it was kind of unexpected for her too. We were so glad that she got to meet Samuel briefly.

A quick update on a couple of our CICU neighbors that you have prayed through over time. S – the first “S” who we thought was 10, but is actually 14 – may be going home tomorrow. The doctors cannot believe the recovery that he has made. They are calling him a little miracle. We’ve gotten to know not just the family, but S himself the last few days - a neat young man. The other S –- a 20-month old girl -- for whom we asked for prayer just a couple of nights ago is doing much better. The news from that night was essentially the best-case scenario. She is not entirely out of the woods yet, but she was moved to the Cardiac Step-down Unit this morning. That was a surprise both to us and her parents. We thank God for this good news and for these answers to our prayers. Thank you for joining us in prayer. Please keep it up. We need it.