Trusting in the Lord while ALL odds are against your faith.

It was back in October of 2001, just a few short months after my husband and I brought our first home and relocated to Tacoma, WA. We felt so blessed because we had just been “upgraded”. We had left our tiny 750 square foot, 2 bedroom apartment with our 3 children and 1 more on the way, to a 4-bedroom house with a huge, fully-fenced yard. Life was great, with no complaints. All the odds were against us. We had only one income, which was his, and every single financial advisor repeatedly told us we would never be able to own a home in our current financial state. By the way, his job is working for a grocery distributor so he wasn’t making a whole ton of money. It was just enough for us to pay bills and feed our family. I was pregnant with our fourth child. We were in that small 2 bedroom apartment making the best of a very crammed living situation. My other 3 children were pretty close in age, one being in elementary school, and the other 2 still in diapers at the same time, not twins. We attended church faithfully in Seattle. Every Tuesday night bible band, every Wednesday night prayer revival, every Friday evening testimony service and Sunday school plus Sunday morning and afternoon worship. Not to mention if we had a 3pm service to fellowship with another church we were at that too. It was a lot of church but it was good for us, it was what was necessary as “babes in Christ” and “newly saved Christians”. Anyways, we put our faith in addition to our financial responsibilities to the test and we began driving around looking at homes. Wishing, hoping, dreaming and praying that God would make a way, when all odds were against us. We did this for about a year or two, and I would literally pray and ask God for his will to be done, then I would knock on the doors of the homes I hoped to live in one day, and you already know we were “seeking”. Literally putting our faith into action. Finally, after attending a seminar at our financial institution we learned more about home loans and debt-to-income ratios, and what the banks are looking for as qualified candidates to loan their money to. I must say the only good thing working in our favor was that we had good credit. ALL the rest, was against us. I came across a website back then called Washington Home Grants and I applied. (This was before the market crashed and before 911 when banks were taking more risks) I was skeptical but proceeded to apply. Long story short, we were approved for their grant program, so now we just had to find a seller who would pay the closing fees and a financial institution that would take a chance on us buying our first home. After much continuous searching and looking at homes we came across the house in Tacoma. Sellers agreed to pay the closing and we literally and truly moved into our first home with no money down and none rolled into our loan. The only thing we put was earnest money that was refunded at closing. Okay so we beat the odds here. Now onto the real story…. This is where life gets REAL!

I had just returned to a local community college near Des Moines, WA and planned to major in Law or become a certified legal secretary. Mind you, I was very pregnant with my fourth child and my plans were to continue with night classes after he or she was born while my husband worked days. As you know, life doesn’t always go as planned. And sadly in my life, as you will find here in my articles are that my plans NEVER go the way I hope they will.

So I gave birth to our fourth child and it was another boy. I continued with my courses after his birth right up until my whole world was flipped upside down. My son was born normal and healthy and on time with no complications. But none of that seemed to matter now. Because at his precious young age of 2 months, he suffered cardiac arrest. I’ll never forget that Friday morning. It was October 26th that year. I had just finished breast feeding him and laid him down for his nap. A few moments later I heard him crying so I went to pick him up, and the very instant I lifted him, his cry began to change in sound. He began to sound like one of those monsters in a horror film, as if he sounded “possessed” that’s truly the only way I can describe the way I heard his cry. Initially I thought he was really gassy and just needed to pass gas. But when his cry began to sound “different” it became a major concern. As a mom, you know when something isn’t right. So I called my husband at work and he came to the phone, and I told him our son wasn’t breathing right, and he was crying weird. Then I proceeded to put my sons face up to the phone to try and let my husband hear what he sounded like. My husband explained it was probably nothing, and that our son was still stuffed up from a cold he had been getting over. However, while on that phone call, my son stopped breathing while in my arms. And I yelled into the phone, “He’s not breathing, He’s not breathing anymore!” My husband had to literally tell me to dial 911. It’s easy for others to say, that is common sense, but at that very moment, it was like I was frozen in time for those split seconds and I panicked because this was so unexpected. The 911 operator had to walk me through doing a finger sweep as well as infant CPR, but it wasn’t working. My sons tongue was stiff, his face was bluish/purple. His body was straight, stiff and hard. It was as if his spirit had left his body. He was dead in my arms. The aid car and medics seemed like they took forever but that was only because I was in urgent need of help. I began praying and calling on the Lord. My other 2 toddlers were home with me, while my oldest was at school. Meanwhile, my husband had to commute from Bellevue to Tacoma as he left work immediately to race home. By the time he got home, the medics had already taken my son to the closest hospital and one medic stayed behind so we could follow them, because we had just moved to Tacoma and didn’t know where anything was. I remember my husband running inside and heading upstairs, asking me, “where’s my son?” I said, “they took him”. I was still in the middle of getting my 2 children together so we could head to the hospital. He then asked me, “Was he breathing?” I said, “no”. He began to weep. I didn’t have time to weep. My mind was focused on Jesus, prayer and putting my faith into action. It was difficult to explain to a 1-year-old and a 2-year-old that their baby brother was not doing good. I just remember them standing there watching these people work on their tiny baby brother. There he laid, lifeless, stiff and cold. I stood there pacing back and forth, praying out loud in Jesus name, carelessly that others were around.

We finally arrived to the emergency department of the children’s hospital. Upon entering his room, there was a doctor and a nurse who said they were able to revive him with some Epinephrine. And then they began to grill me as if I did something wrong. The nurse asked me in a very rude mannerism why his potassium levels were so low? I told her I didn’t know. And then went onto ask her what does potassium levels have to do with his state? She didn’t answer me. Anyways, without going into all the fine details of every single thing. I will share with you the meaningful moments and explain just what it meant to me, personally, to trust in the Lord while ALL odds were against my faith, yet again, but in a very different way and at a more intense level and category of belief.

After being questioned over and over again by doctors, nurses, and case workers, about what happened at home with my son. They finally backed off, after my son’s heart rate shot up to 233 beats per min while in the PICU. (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit). I stayed by his bedside 24/7 except to use the toilet. I wanted to make sure he was getting the best care from the doctors and staff and that he was not being ignored. I asked every question, inquired about every medication that was pumped into his little veins, along with side effects, and became so familiar with the ventilator and the machine that kept his oxygen levels, heart rate and blood pressures that I knew how to turn the volumes down and when to call for the nurse. At this point I still hadn’t allowed myself to process the trauma. I still hadn’t allowed myself to cry a tear. My husband wasn’t in the room often, because he couldn’t handle seeing our son like this. And although he wasn’t physically present as much as I hoped he would be, I just knew God was strengthening me during what was supposed to be a horrible time. In hindsight, now looking back I can truly accredit my strength to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

While my son was in the PICU, I hadn’t slept in days, probably weeks. I got comfortable after a few weeks being able to leave his room for a short amount of time. I would go sit with my husband down the hall in another room and console him. Then I would walk the halls of the hospital like I owned the place. At that time, I knew all the staff on that floor and they all knew me. I would walk around with my hair undone and my pajamas still on from the night before and my eyes barely able to stay opened, burning from days of not sleeping. I didn’t care, I just wanted to know that I was here with my son. I just wanted to see God move on my act of faith. I just wanted my baby to be okay. I wanted him to be able to breathe on his own again and I wanted him to know he wasn’t alone in that room. I wanted him to hear my voice and not forget me as he laid there on life support. They offered to let me use an electric double breast pump so I could continue to pump. Even though he wasn’t able to be fed at that time. After about a week or two, I just remember asking the doctors if they could wean him down from all the IV drugs because I wanted to see my baby again. Not some lifeless baby who was being kept alive by a machine. I had faith and hope that he would be okay. I begged them to let me take him back home as we approached the holidays. Because he went into the hospital on October 26, 2001 and he came home on November 19th. I’ll get to that in a moment. So after much education of the pros and cons of taking him home and signing a waiver from the hospital because I was going against doctors recommendations of wanting him discharged. They agreed to let me take him home and gave me a refresher in infant CPR before being discharged. I was completely aware of the risks involved. They explained he could have another cardiac arrest and he could die next time for sure. However, for some people reading this, you might feel I made the wrong choice, but that’s not how the story ends. So keep reading through to the end. These doctors and staff knew I was leaning on my faith in God and not medicine alone. And that I didn’t care what they said. I just wanted to take my baby home and be a family again with my other 3 children and husband. I wanted to celebrate our holiday at home even if they tried convincing me it could be the last one with him being here. That was even more the reason why I wanted to take him home. I told that pediatric cardiologist, that I was fully aware he could die at home, but I also said, to him, “he could also die here in the hospital! You cannot guarantee me that your medicine is going to work, or that by him staying on all these anesthesia medications isn’t going to effect him?!” So I told him, “I would much rather take my chances with GOD and at home.” So we were discharged on Monday, November 19th. I was relieved, scared, worried, hopeful, and exhausted all at the same time. Unfortunately, just days later on November 22nd, Thanksgiving morning, my son was laying in the bed with me and my husband and he went back into another cardiac arrest, only this time I knew CPR and wasn’t panicked. My husband called 911 as I performed chest compressions on my son until the medics arrived. I was in my bra and panties, but in situations like these you don’t care, because your sole focus is what’s in front of you. And that was my son’s life. This time around my son, our son, hadn’t completely stopped breathing, but his breaths were fading and weak. Once again they took him back to that same hospital. And I all I could think about was that doctor is going to shun me for going against his recommendations and the “enemy” was saying to me, “where is your God now?” Oh yes, my faith was being tested, tried, questioned, doubted, ridiculed, everything but good.

He was admitted back into the hospital once again. I remained steadfast in my faith. I believed in spite of what was in front of me, that my son would be healed and God would get the glory through my son’s story. I can’t explain it and I couldn’t explain it then either, but it is just this overwhelming feeling that came over me, this odd sense of peace and comfort that God had my back and that according to my faith, God was not going to let me down. Meanwhile, the doctors kept looking at me as if I was stupid and that my faith was a bunch of nonsense. They didn’t have to say anything, because their demeanor said it all, their body language, exemplified that I was just some idiot mom who shouldn’t have gone against their “expertise of medical practice”. I just remained quiet this time around and continued praying around the clock. During this very trying time, my son was yet again fighting for his life. Back on life support once again. Having to be shocked by an external defibrillator because he had several episodes of ventricular tachycardia and what they called “vetch runs”. And to top it off, all the other infant babies inside the PICU were dying all around us. Literally everyday another baby wasn’t going home to be with their family and instead I could hear the screams, weeping and cries of the mother as they would pull that blue curtain and slide the glass door closed. I could see the pain and the hurt within the eyes of these other moms. Sad to think some of them came in around the same time as my family. I had only wondered if they had something to hold them, a hope to look to, a faith to stand upon? So I took it upon myself one day to reach out to this other mom, who’s son was on life support in the room next to my sons. I began to ask her how old her son was and what was the reason he was here? Ironically, her story was nearly identical to mine, of the first time around. She explained how she had been breast feeding her son and he began to cry and eventually stopped breathing. Chills went up my spine. It was a little creepy to be honest. Anyways, she too was pumping her breast milk as was I again. We both stored our containers filled with breast milk inside the tiny hospital fridge with our babies name labeled upon them. I met up with her later that day and we spent a short time in the cafeteria just enough for me to ask her if she believed in God and if it was okay for me to pray with her and for her son? She replied that she believed in God but that she wasn’t a religious person and she doesn’t go to church. She accepted the prayer from me and I was so hopeful for her son as I was my own. Sadly later that night, her son’s room had that same blue curtain pulled closed, glass door shut and she began to weep and I could hear her baby’s monitor flatline. She had decided to pull the plug on her son’s life support. My heart went out to her. I felt confused in that moment, wondering why she had given up hope? Was it because she allowed the bad news of the doctors to influence her decisions for his potential future? It wasn’t up to me to judge for her decision nor was it my position to decide what she thought was best for him. Later that evening, she left with her family. I was too speechless to say anything to her before she left. She was a stranger to me so I didn’t feel it was my place to say anything further to her. All I could do is pray for God to give her some form of comfort in her time of loss.

The following day, my son’s heart continued to have these rapid fast life threatening heart rhythms. And yet another pediatric cardiologist came in to meet with me and my husband after making her rounds. She sat us down and attempted to explain to us that our son has a heart condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy which in laments terms is a abnormally thick heart and has very serious life threatening complications associated with it. And his heart is failing to pump correctly and will continue to fail. She looked at me and said, “your son has less than a 30% chance of surviving this, and if he were to live, he will be in a vegetative state, he will likely never walk or talk.” My husband dropped his head and began to weep. I looked over to my husband, grabbed his hand and he looked at me and I said to him, “I’M NOT RECEIVING THAT”. See what you don’t know is that just because someone delivers horrible news, doesn’t mean you have to receive it. And I said this right in front of the doctor. She then asked if we wanted to talk with the hospital chaplain? I declined the offer and told her that we have our own pastor if we need support. I wasn’t about to let this lady doctor come up in here and tell me my son is going to die, or that he will be a vegetable and basically write him off as dead and ask me to have a hospital chaplain come in and pray as if it was his last few hours with us. Just because every other single baby around us had passed away or that their parent’s had decided to pull the plug, didn’t have influence on my faith. The doctor left out and my husband continued to weep, as I consoled him and spoke life and quoted every faith scripture and healing scripture I had been standing on.

Some time passed and the hospital determined that they were no longer fit to provide the care or level of expertise that my son’s life required at this point in time. So with much thought, prayer and patience, they said he needed to see an electrophysiologist but there were only two that they could refer to, one in Seattle and one in Portland. I asked which one had more experience and success rates? They said they can’t answer that, but what they could tell me was that the Seattle doctor was fairly new from internship and the Portland doctor was well established. I told them I want my son to go to Portland then because I didn’t him with an unexperienced doctor and being a guinea pig project. Yea I said that! They said there is one problem with that, and it was that I didn’t get to choose. There were factors to be considered. Our health insurance would only cover in state care and the only way that my son would be able to go to Portland was if the Seattle doctor for some reason was unavailable. So we prayed and prayed and asked God to make a way, and let his will be done. Long story short, the Seattle doctor became unavailable so my son was eligible to be transported to Portland. But now we had other obstacles to face, because he was needing to be airlifted, we had to wait for his blood pressure to become stable enough for transport and for his heart rhythm to be somewhat better controlled. He was eventually airlifted to Portland and I flew with him in this tiny Learjet like plane. They could only accommodate me to come along so my husband drove from Tacoma to Portland. Back then we had no navigation on our phones like today. Just paper mapquest print outs. And he left right away, while leaving my other 3 kids with a friend. As we arrived at the hospital roof top and got down to the floor of the hospital PICU in Portland, I thought to myself I wonder how long it will be before my husband arrives? I guess the Lord must have known to be his navigation that night because as they were wheeling my sons bed into the room and I was following behind, passing by the nurses station, in walks my husband through the doors! Seriously!

So let me back up, because I left out some other minor but important details. In between the first time of coming home and the second time of going back he was sent home on Amiodarone and propranolol which I was told at that time the amiodarone was the most potent medication for him and only available in an IV drip or I could get it filled at a compound pharmacy. So I did. In a nutshell, they weren’t effective. And because these medications only sedated him to be a zombie baby, I didn’t like the effects. So when we returned back the second time I told the doctors I did not want him on these medications any longer. I saw more harm to his organs that good for his heart. Call me stupid for this decision but the way I saw it was like this, if you couldn’t guarantee me that my son’s heart condition would improve on a medication that would likely cause his other organs to fail at some point than it wasn’t worth the risk for his quality of life. I was better off with my chances of faith in Jesus.

Back to the Portland hospital transport. The doctors in Tacoma told us my son was being transported to see an electrophysiologist because something was wrong with his electrical conduction of his heart and the way its pumping, more like fluttering. However, upon meeting with the EP doc, he says the original plan was to perform an EP study, but now this Portland doctor was suggesting a whole different surgical procedure. One that had rarely been done in infants and was considered extremely risky. He wanted to implant an internal defibrillator inside my sons abdomen. Typically they are implanted in the upper shoulder area of adults. It was explained that it would be the size of a pager and wires would be placed and the battery would need to be replaced every 6 – 10 years depending on how often it has to fire an electrical shock. Of course, this was not what we wanted to hear. But I wanted to do what was best for my son. I needed to know all the risks, all the pros and cons. Had he ever performed this surgery before? How great of a risk of infection is there? What if the device doesn’t work after it’s implanted? How long was the surgery going to take? What would recovery time look like? Would they be able to keep my son comfortable afterwards? I had a ton of questions.