Our new daily routine after delivering our twin boys was to drive every day to Children’s Hospital in Seattle to spend some time with our new babies.
Besides that, I decided I was done having kids. I went back to my OB/GYN and had him cauterize my tubes together. I did not want anything like this to ever happen again. I stressed over and over that I didn’t want an accident to ever occur – so make sure it was done good!
Meanwhile, both Gary and I were worried about dragging Matthew with us every day to go to the hospital. What kind of a daily routine was that for a young 2 year-old boy? We were so blessed that my sister knew of a young gal who came to be his nanny for a couple of months.
After the first few weeks, the staff at the hospital told us that they felt Jeffrey was now strong enough to try sucking from a bottle instead of being fed intravenously. Hurray! Yet poor little Bryan was not even close.
As we held our babies every day trying to let them know how much we loved them, we found ourselves wondering particularly about little Bryan as he was so unresponsive. Did he know that his daddy and mommy were holding him? Did he know that they loved him so very much? Our hearts were bleeding…
Around 3 months later, the doctors stated that they now felt that Jeffrey was well enough to go home, but he had to remain on oxygen for awhile. It was so exciting to take him home! Matthew was the best big brother to him, constantly cuddling him and telling him he loved him.
But then came the day a couple weeks later when we arrived at the hospital to visit Bryan, and his main physician asked us to come into a conference room with him. He told us that they had completed some additional testing on Bryan because they were all puzzled as to why he just was not responding as they felt he should.
Then came the real blow: He told us that the tests concluded that little Bryan’s brain stem was not connected the way it was supposed to be. There was nothing they could do to rectify this issue, unfortunately. His best prognosis? Little Bryan would grow up not ever being able to walk, talk, take in food, or move any of his limbs. The only think that he probably would be able to do was think.
As I sat there a picture swirled around in my head of our little boy sitting and just watching the world moving all around him, but never being able to participate in anything. I just could not think of anything worse than that. My heart was breaking in two.
The doctor said the recommendation of the specialists was to keep him comfortable by providing him with the nourishment he needed, and medicine to keep him out of pain. Then? Well we just had to place him in God’s hands…
Gary and I sat in silence. Never had I ever dreamed anything like this could happen to us.
The doctor was wonderfully sympathetic, and told us to take as much time as we needed to think about all the news. It didn’t take both Gary and I long to realize that we agreed with the doctor. We needed to leave him in God’s hands.
As we discussed everything with the physician, he informed us that they could only keep Bryan at the hospital for a short time longer. However he knew of a great “fragile care” home that was located not too far from where we lived. This home provided care for children up to 18 years of age who were too ill to live at home. He asked us to go and take a look at it, and then get back to him.
We left the hospital in a fog and drove home. This just didn’t seem fair, but we needed to try and put on good happy “parent faces” to take care of Matthew and Jeffrey, so we did the best we could.
The God Of All Comfort 