More Prayers Please.... Pass it on

Little baby Laith needs your prayers and I am asking to ask anyone you know who prays to pray for him too. He pulls my heart strings and although his story is different than my Matthew it takes me back and it breaks my heart. I am praying that his parents will never know that same pain. The following is an update on how he is doing from his mom.

Well it's certainly been an eventful last few weeks since I last posted an update! The doctors have gradually been trying to wean him off his vent and his paralytics and sedatives, and as his lungs started to improve that became easier to do. So last Sunday (3/15) they were able to wean him off his vent and he was extubated. The nurse called me early Sunday morning, as for the last day or two it had been an any day now type of situation, and gave me the great news! We were so excited we immediately rushed to the hospital to see him. He looked so much happier! He wasn't quite smiling, but he certainly seemed more content and relaxed than he had been for the past few days.

But as some of you know, things have a tendency to change quickly, and overnight his x-rays showed his lungs getting progressively worse and he was working harder to breathe and unfortunately they had to intubate him again Monday morning. What made that more difficult was he was also starting to show signs of withdrawal from all the medications he had been on and since he hadn't been receiving consistent feeds and none at very high calories, he also was really skinny and weak, probably the weakest I'd ever seen him. It was heartbreaking to see him so weak he didn't even fight getting his dressing changed or being suctioned (tube goes through the tube he's intubated with to suction out all the junk in his lungs). Luckily that did not last long as he is nothing if not a fighter at heart, and within two days of being on higher calorie feeds he started getting his energy back. His lungs also cleared up significantly, but rather than extubate (remove the breathing tube) from him again and risk having to put it back again, the doctors wanted to wean him off more slowly and give him time to gain weight and get more energy so he wouldn't need to work so hard to breathe. So as much as he dislikes the tube (and he really doesn't as stares at you with his brown eyes seeming to plead with you to take it out!) this seems like the best thing for him right now, even weighing it against the risk of infection (of leaving the tube in).

Now as some of you may recall from the last note, there were clots in the left pump that required that it be changed out immediately. Well this week, there was a very large clot in the right pump that had gradually accumulated and so they had to change out the right pump this time. Thankfully, the transition went very smoothly and his pumps are functioning as they should. So for now, the plan is to help him gain weight, get his strength back and patiently wait for a donor heart.

The waiting is, of course, the hardest part, and as I have been struggling with praying for a heart, a friend passed on some words of wisdom that were given to her when she went through this - she said you are not asking "God to take another childs life so that mine can live" but rather "asking him to give a grieving family the strength to let them make the decision to donate their child's organs because the child's fate has already been determined."