Friday 28 March 2014

Whirlwind...

I thought it would be easy to keep up with this blog but with a newborn and two toddlers at home. I don't quite have the amount of free time I had imagined ;) Two weeks ago my husband noticed that Nate's right testicle was twice the size of the left one. We paged the midwife right away and she came over and said it wasn't normal. We saw our doctor a couple days later and he knew immediately that it was a hernia that would need to be repaired surgically. He sent off the requisition for us to speak to a surgeon which we did on Monday of this week and he told us that Nate would be having surgery on Thursday morning. Yikes! I was really hoping that they'd be able to wait until he was a bit bigger but apparently the risk of complications and issues were too high so the surgeon cancelled other patients and squeezed us in. We met with the anesthesiologist and she kept asking if the doctor was sure he couldn't put off the surgery until Nate was bigger which was concerning because I had the same question. I finally told her he didn't give us a choice.

 We arrived at the hospital at 6:30 am yesterday morning and I held him right up until I had to give him to the nurse just before 8am. I must have told him I loved him a hundred times in that hour and a half. We met with another anesthesiologist (the one who would be at the surgery) and I asked him if it was safe to do the surgery at this point because of how tiny Nate was and his answer was simply "we need to do the surgery now". I guess the risk of waiting to do the surgery outweighed the risk of the general anesthetic. They told us his surgery would last an hour and so we went to the waiting room and watched home renovation shows to pass the time. Just after 9am the doctor came to tell us that the surgery went well and that it was a really good thing that they did it now because his appendix has slid down into his scrotum. He told us that Nate would be waking up within an hour and that he'd come to get one of us to see him when he was awake. At 10:30 when no one had come yet I knew something was wrong. The surgeon came to talk to us and told us that although Nate was opening up his eyes they couldn't take his breathing tube out because he kept going back to sleep and when he did he stopped breathing. They said if he didn't wake up soon they would have to transfer him to intensive care. An hour later he was in intensive care.:(

He's been in intensive care ever since and still has not woken up. He's been on a ventilator the entire time and has often had to be shaken or jolted to remember to breathe. They wanted to take his tube out but his blood work wasn't where they wanted it to be so it's being left in for now. Mercifully I am allowed to stay by his side at all times and even sleep at the hospital in his room which I am SO grateful for. Friends and family are surrounding us with love, food, snacks, hugs, child care, etc. The doctors have no idea why he's not waking up or why he's having so much trouble breathing but they're working on finding out. They said that this only happens once or twice a year. Another medically rare Larson, just what we wanted!

I'll be completely transparent here, this has not been easy. I couldn't even call anyone when I found out because I was choking back tears at all times. For a few minutes I was even mad at God and told Him that if He took Nate from me I didn't know if our relationship would survive. He let me be angry and throw my fit and then He just wrapped me in His arms and comforted me like only He can. And the words I spoke when I went through cancer came back to me and I shared it with some precious friends of mine:

It's not up to me whether my baby is healed or not. And the outcome of this situation doesn't change God's character or who He is. He doesn't owe me anything, He already died for me. When people tell me that I just need to believe that Nate will be healed and he will or that I should claim his healing, it frustrates me because God is not a genie. Of course I want my baby to be well but if that isn't God's decision does that mean He can't be trusted or isn't good? Does that mean He failed me? I can't pretend to understand His reasoning for the things He allows but it's not for me to understand. It's for me to trust that He is still the same and that all things happen for His glory. And I do trust Him even with an outcome I may not like. The peace I have comes from God, not from within. He doesn't owe me my desired outcome, it doesn't work like that. I trusted Him with my life and now I have to trust Him with my baby's life. He's not surprised by this situation and I take comfort in that.

These circumstances suck, there's no getting around that. But it's still my choice to decide how I'm going to deal with them. Am I going to whine and complain and focus on everything that's going badly? Or am I going to just give it up to Jesus and let Him bear the brunt of this for me? I picked the first one for a good 20 minutes yesterday and I can tell you that the second choice is much more peaceful. I can laugh and smile and relax knowing that whatever happens I have a loving father who will carry me through it. And I also have absolutely incredible friends and family that are bending over backwards to help meet our needs. We are blessed, even in an awful situation. 

If you want me I'll be at the hospital by Nate's side until my sweet boy comes home.

His & yours, 

Meggan xoxo