Saturday, April 4, 2009

Our Crazy Week!

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you.
When you walk through the fire, you shall not be
burned, nor shall the flame scorch you.
Isaiah 43:2







These are the emails my Father-in-law so beautifully composed and instead of rewriting, I am posting what he wrote.
Here is the story of our CRAZY WEEK...

4.03.09

Hello All,

For those of you who are personally and by virtue of geography, in touch with us daily, some of this is “old news”. For the rest of you, an update is overdue, but to relieve any anxiety now, I’ll jump to the end and let you know that all of the solid facts we have are good news. So on with the story….

We started with this announcement sent out late Tuesday night, March24th.

Hello All,

Patsy and I are so proud to announce the arrival of their first grand-daughter, the wonderful, beautiful, healthy, and strong, Grace Young. No middle name yet. Shelly and Josh, also doing wonderfully, delivered Grace today, 3.24.09, at around 7:30PM. She is all of 5 pounds soaking wet, 18 inches tall, full of vim and vigor, has blue eyes and is very likely blonde, though there sure isn’t much hair to go by yet. Easy bet though, huh? Josh and Shelly are looking forward to introducing Grace to her own, darling little nursery, and to her big brother Gavin, tomorrow evening. Let the spoiling begin!!

Love, Guy and Patsy

Shelly and Gavin ended up returning home the afternoon of the 26th. Grace, now with the beautiful middle name of Lily, was doing very well by all indications. She seemed to be eating fine, and all exits were functioning wonderfully. There was a bit of debate about whether or not she was premature, because of her weight, but data was good to indicate she went full term. That question still remains.

Everything seemed to be going well for the family, except for that zombie feeling we all get when night time sleep hours are diminished to that of an owl. Now picture this…on March 31st, I (Guy) was heading towards Josh and Shelly’s from the office with two gifts for Grace and a paycheck for Josh. Grace had been home only 5 days. Down the street in their front yard I can see some activity going on and the first thought was that they had company. A few seconds later I notice the fire truck and paramedics. Just a few minutes before, Grace experimented with the notion of trying things without air for 60 seconds or so. Fortunately she was in Shelly’s hands at the time so Grace’s new game was noticed immediately. Josh, Shelly’s mother, Debbie, and friend, Chrissy, were all home. They called 911, and brought Gavin to the back yard to play and avoid upsetting him. The medics arrived in minutes and jointly, they all decided to take Grace to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Orange. The following morning Grace was taken across the street to CHOC, one of the best children’s hospitals in the nation.

The testing began – and test after test after test has been performed. There were several things of great concern initially. All of those, save one, have been fairly well resolved, or will be fairly easily resolved a bit down the road. The remaining concern is one of unexplained, but mild, seizures. Thankfully they have ruled out the brain as being the cause. All of the neurological tests have come back negative. It seems that there is just one thing now that needs to happen before they will release Grace. Gracie must be able to comfortably nurse/bottle feed without building up such a sweat. Currently, she burns more calories nursing than she is taking in. Otherwise, Grace is looking so sweet and tender and happy and comfy, but it breaks our hearts to see her in the hospital and not home where she belongs. Many more test results have yet to come in and be interpreted, as much still remains unknown, about the seizures in particular.

Now the rest of the story… Of course Tuesday night J&S got little to no sleep at the hospital. Gavin stayed with Debbie and Jeff. Wednesday night J&S decided to sleep at home with Gavin. Gavin decided to get the flu, in part to let it be known that his main exit also worked well and that his main entry worked well, even in reverse. For a second consecutive night J&S found very little shut eye. Gavin spent all day Thursday with Patsy at our house, but only improved a bit. Last night, Gavin did pretty darn good, only providing minimal excitement for Patsy and I with one very impressive regurgitation. Today his temperature picked up in spite of the meds, Josh came to our house from CHOC, spent some time with Gavin as we tried to get his temp down with only marginal success. Around 2:20PM, Josh left to CHOC with Gavin on the way to their ER! So the family is together again! We were most concerned about Gavin dehydrating, hence the trip to CHOC. As of now, around 5:30PM, Gavin has an ER room with an IV hooked up and blood work beginning to help figure things out.

First, as a family we want to express our gratitude for all of those lifting our family up in prayer. At least 6 churches, another 6 or more home study groups, and hundreds of family and friends have been praying for the J&S Young family. The results of that, along with a great hospital and staff for which we are also very thankful, are the test results we hoped for Grace, and a dad and mom staying strong, calm, and impressively in control through maybe the most difficult time of their young lives. All we ask is that the prayers continue. With that first, and also with the dedicated work of the fantastic doctors caring for Grace, they will all soon return home together, as Gavin puts it, as a “new family”.

We thank you all again and will update you as more solid information comes in.

Love,

Guy, Patsy, Ryan, Sean, Josh, Shelly, Gavin and the lovely and wonderful Grace.

************************************************************************************
Saturday, 4-4-09
We are still at the hospital.
My children are now on the 2nd and 4th floor, but thankfully we are all under the same roof...it just happens to be a hospital roof! :)
Gavin has now spent 2 nights here and will hopefully be released tomorrow. He was doing much better tonight. Thank you Lord!
It looks like Gracie will most likely be here well into next week. We are just praying that we can get this feeding thing under control. Praise the Lord that this is all we have to deal with. We are surrounded by families that have much harder circumstances and have had devastating news and our hearts are broken for them. At the same time we are so grateful for God's grace towards our family.
God created Gracie exactly the way she was meant to be, perfectly, according to His will. We are just learning how to be her parents. It is our absolute pleasure being these kids parents. We are so grateful for our little family, so grateful that we have each other, and so grateful that we have Jesus. He is our rock.

2 comments:

maxmansmom said...

First off a big Welcome to the family to little but mighty Grace Young ! You will have so much fun with this awesome family of ours.
Second, little Gavin, woohoo for being a big strong boy and getting all better, no more scares like that ok ?
Congrats to you Josh and Shelley, it's been a week for you hasn't it ? We pray for calm times ahead !
Much love to you !

maxmansmom said...

If you have not already, look up
the song A mother's prayer by Laura Kauffman.
It's a free download for that song and it's lovely, all about a little girl.
Also if you want you can buy her lullaby cd...... I have that song on my blog for Lexi. you can hear it if you get the time
www.ljhalter.blogspot.com