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Here's Sam, sleeping peacefully, at about 3 weeks old. He has no idea that half the world is praying for him...
As you probably already know, Sam didn't make his entrance in
the usual way. Due to some unexpected craziness during delivery, he was without oxygen for up to 20 minutes.
(Read what happened on July 29, 2004) So he made his first helicopter
flight right away, and was taken to Tampa General Hospital, where they have a high level Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
(NICU). Sam was lucky enough to be assigned some of the best nurses we could have hoped for. They cared
for him and loved him when we couldn't be there ourselves (there are times they throw you out of the NICU, even when you're
not rowdy).
The doctors at first didn't expect him to make it through the night,
but he showed them. He was off of the ventilator (life support) by morning. He's had some setbacks here and there
(aside from the BIG obvious one) but he keeps making progress all the time.
We've been praying hard, and so have you. Slowly but surely, we're getting the miracle we're
praying for and Sam is being healed.
Here we are at the NICU at Tampa General. Ben couldn't be prouder.
| Ben loves to perform... |
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| he's dancing for the NICU nurses |
| Sam at one week old |
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| The puffiness is from all of the swelling and fluid he retained |
When I got out of the hospital, Sam was 4 days old and we had never
met. On my first visit to him, they placed him in my arms and I was overwhelmed. His doctor came up to me
immediately and asked if I had any questions. When I told her I didn't, she said, "Well, he's not making any progress,
and the longer he goes, the less chance he ever will progress."
Needless to say, Tim and I never spoke to her again. We told
all of the doctors that we were just praying hard and trusting God to heal him. Most of them said they'd pray; almost
all of them looked at us sadly as if we just didn't get it. They told us things like "at least he's not in any pain"
and "it's good he's not responding, at least he's not suffering".
And then, God helped Sam kick in.
At 6 days old, he squeezed my finger. This was the first sign
of response we had from him, and it was HUGE. At 7 days, he kicked his right leg. At 8 days, he waved his right
arm. At 9 days, he added his left leg and arm to the dance. Then he started stretching all over and turning his
head from side to side. At 14 days, his eyes opened. Since then, he's changed a little every day.
One of the problems Sam has right now is that he doesn't swallow yet.
He will - we're sure of it - but right now it's a reflex that he lost and hasn't yet regained. Because of that, he has
a feeding tube in his stomach. Before they placed it surgically, it went through his nose or his throat; you can see
it in a lot of the pictures. He also had surgery to partially close the top of his stomach to help him keep his food
down...where it belongs. He had the surgery at St. Joseph's Hospital,where we were also blessed with caring nurses, and
then they released him back to Tampa General, who sent us home a week later. It took that long to get the home care
in place; we were really just twiddling our thumbs for that week.
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