Little Andrew

Yesterday I received a call from my next door neighbor (and good friend). She was in tears and I could barely understand her. She finally got out that her son, Andrew (age 3), had taken a turn for the worse....Let me back up here and tell you the story of our special little Andrew, or "Baby Andrew" as we have all called him for 3 years now.

Baby Andrew was born in November 2006. His mom knew that something was not quite right while he was still in her womb but the doctors would hook her up and monitor his heart and say she was just being "paranoid"..."he was doing great". There's that mother's instinct for you. Anyways, when he was born it was apparent that there was something very wrong. They finally diagnosed SMA which stands for Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a pretty rare condition and one that most of us have never heard of. To put it simply, Andrew cannot move any muscles in his body. He is the most severe, type 0. Since birth he has been on a respirator to breathe and has a feeding tube into his stomach for nutrition. However, his brain is perfect. He thinks/feels just like the rest of us. They actually say kids with SMA are usually of above-average intelligence. Due to the extreme needs of his care, he lives at the Children's Center in Bethany, Oklahoma. An incredible place if you've never been there, I might add. I am always impressed by the amount of love/care given to the children by the staff.

So obviously this really changed my neighbors' lives. They now had a third child whom couldn't even live at home with them. Can you imagine? Here I complain about my kiddos driving me crazy and my neighbor would give just about anything for her son to BE HOME driving her crazy.

So, after the initial shock of Andrew's condition, things fell into a "comfortable" routine. Catherine would go spend every morning in Bethany at the Children's Center and her husband would go by every day after work. Also there were relatives and friends that would visit time to time. Personally the visits I've had with Andrew at TCC (the Children' Center) have been some of the most cherished moments of my life thus far. There is something about when I visit him....I feel God's presence with him when I am there. Perhaps I feel God's presence in the whole center. It is a special place. Anyways, there have been bumps in the road for sure. He has had pneumonia, horrible skin ulcers, and other issues. However, there have been some huge victories. He gets to go to class where they put a visor-type thing on him that responds to his eye movement while he is watching things on a big screen. He has physical therapy, occupational therapy, gets to go in a big gym, and they recently have been letting him play this really neat game (all with eye movement).

However, in the past month Andrew has been hospitalized twice for pneumonia. Obviously pneumonia can be deadly for anyone, but especially for Andrew. This has happened to coincide with my friend's husband having to be out of town for work....first for 2 weeks (the whole first time Andrew was in the hospital)...then he was home a weekend and back out of town for another week (in which time Andrew had gone back to TCC but then had to be re-hospitalized again for pneumonia)....then this past weekend he was home for 1 night and had to go back out of town which he still is. So, I say all of that to show that my dear friend has been under a HUGE amount of stress. Trying to be at the hospital with her very sick son...trying to be home with her other two children...oh, and not to mention that we have had a BLIZZARD and now another huge ice/snowstorm which has made travel dangerous (and of course she is driving back and forth to the hospital) and had her other kids home from school...which has meant her having to find other people to watch her kids.

And then yesterday I got the phone call. The phone call that made my stomach drop and my eyes instantly well-up with tears. Andrew had taken a turn for the worse. They were beginning to think that the infection had spread throughout his little 3 yr. old body. My friend could barely choke this out on the phone....however, she was calling me to send out an email asking for prayer. Which I did. And right now I am just waiting to hear any news. She stayed at the hospital all night with him. I'm not sure if she was alone or not. I asked her if she would have someone with her and she said "I think so". My other neighbor and I struggled all night last night wondering if we should go there and be with her. But my neighbor is a very private person, not like me at all. We were worried we might be more of a hindrance than a help.

So now we wait. And we pray. We pray for the doctors to know what to do for Andrew. We pray for him not to be in pain. We pray for him to feel God's presence with him. And we pray for his mom. That God would give her the strength and comfort she so very needs right now. It is in His hands....