Thursday brought hurricane force winds to our little part of the world. Trees were ripped from their homes pulling up the earth around them, shingles dislodged, fences toppled, and the general mayhem we've seen on T.V. but rarely seen for ourselves was suddenly right outside our doors.
Along with the physical damage of the landscape and our homes came the loss of power to much of Davis County and, at one point, the entire city of Bountiful. My mom and step-dad's home joined those without power for most of the day.
With the evening approaching they made the decision to purchase a new generator to keep their house and themselves warm. My sister and her four young kids had been visiting from Colorado and had been staying with my mom. They planned to spend the night there. You see, they had been told that the power would be restored by 5pm. Dave, my step-dad, thought he just might be able to get the generator running by 5pm as well. But by 6:30pm when there was no power from either source, corralling 4 cold, hungry kids in a dark house became quite challenging. So when I called to offer a hot dinner in a warm home that never lost power for an extended time during the day, Annie and the kids decided to change plans and spend the night at my house.
That was the first miracle.
Earlier in the day, Dave spent 9 hours using his chain saw helping neighbors remove trees that had either fallen or looked like they were on their way down. By the time he got the generator running, in an outside storage room that shared one wall with the house, at 7pm he was exhausted. Mom and Dave decided to head to bed shortly after the power came on at 11pm. Dave was experiencing dizzy spells now and again and mom felt more wiped out than usual. They attributed all of this to their busy, long, strenuous day. With Dave barley making it into his bed and mom not really knowing how to turn the generator off they decided they would let it run through the night to help continue warming up the house.
At some point the carbon monoxide detector got unplugged because it was thought to be malfunctioning due to the power outage.
They both went to sleep.
At 4:30am Dave woke up.
That was the second miracle.
Carbon monoxide had been seeping into the home through the shared wall with the storage unit since 7pm. Dave should not have woken up.
After waking up Dave realized he couldn't move well. He knew something was horribly wrong. Using what strength he had, which was already compromised from he long hours of clearing trees the day before, he woke mom up and explained they were in trouble. She found she also could not move well. Dave pushed mom off the bed and then threw his body to the floor.
From their room to the front door is only about 30 feet.
After hitting the floor, Dave made his way over to mom. With no ability to walk, together they began to scoot, slowly, toward the front door. Dave using any extra strength he had, after inching himself forward, to push mom even further ahead. They continued in this pattern for over an hour. Struggling to breath or move. Terrified of what would happen if they didn't. Hardly being able to think other than that they needed fresh air and that that air was outside.
At some point the front door opened.
Neither of them remember how that happened as the lock is higher then they had energy to reach let alone strength to push the door while turning the lock.
That was the third miracle.
During mom and Dave's long struggle to the door, Heather, a neighbor, had woken up early to meet her friend for a run while checking on the damage to her neighbors. Her friend wasn't there. She decided to continue with her plans and began her normal run route. Shortly she felt she should alter her route and run one street above. She had never run this way before. It was still in her ward boundaries so she new the street but she had never exercised along it.She said it was more than a random decision....something decided for her.
That was the fourth miracle.
One street above her normal run route two people were fighting for their lives.
As she ran along the new street, at about 6:10 am, she noticed mom and Dave's door open. Looking closer she saw my mom army crawling, with her hair in her face. I talked to Heather and she said my mom's face, a face of a person terrified and struggling for her life, will randomly flash through her mind and catch her off guard leaving nothing left to do but cry. Then Heather saw Dave behind mom also crawling on his belly. She ran to them and dragged mom out onto the porch landing. Then she dragged Dave as far as the door, but he didn't want to go much further because he was only in his garments.
Heather questioned them for a minute, but they were very dazed. She needed to get them warm. They were very hesitant to let her go in the house because of the danger. Heather told me she found out as much information regarding the location of Dave's robe, some socks, and a blanket as she could, held her breath, covered her mouth in the elbow of her arm and ran through the room gathering the items. She very much wanted me to document that Dave was VERY insistent that she get nothing for him. He only wanted mom taken care of. She said that he didn't want her to spend any energy or time on him, only on his wife.
On a lighter note for a moment, Heather shared with me that she had found mom a blanket and wanted to get one for Dave so she asked them where more blankets where. They both said, "We don't have any more blankets." She tried to reason with them that they probably did, but neither one would consent to that idea.
Realizing that mom and Dave needed more help then she had, and not having a phone with her, she ran four houses down to a friend who is also a nurse. The nurse friend came running, attended to mom and Dave and called 911. The ambulance arrived within 5 minutes.
The house tested at over 400 parts per million.To put that into perspective, a carbon monoxide detector goes off at 30 parts per million.
After 4 hours of oxygen treatment mom and Dave were released.
That was the fifth miracle.
They are tired, but they. are. alive!
Their house was tested 100% neg. for carbon monoxide shortly after their hospital release
When you stop and think just how close that came to ending differently, it becomes hard to breath.
If Annie had decided to stay and spend the night at mom and Dave's, her children.....I can't even finish the sentence.
If Dave had not been woken up.
I know he was woken up by the Holy Ghost. There is no other explanation. None. People with that level of carbon monoxide poisoning don't. wake. up. They just don't. We have a mortician friend and when he heard the story he said, "My only experience with carbon monoxide poisoning is if you are poisoned enough to be taken in an ambulance, you don't get better."
If the door had not been open when Heather passed.
If Heather had not listened to the promptings to take an alternate path.
If the oxygen treatment had not worked.
I am SO grateful for a loving Father in Heaven who is so mindful of us. I am grateful for miracles. I absolutely have no doubt that's what happened in this situation. I would venture to say this would even be a challenge for those who believe in only coincidences to explain.
Personally, I know, I know, none of it was a coincidence. I am so grateful to know who I can thank for allowing me and my family more time. I know because of what I believe.
The rest of this season will no longer have the same meaning as years before. The meaning will be deeper. I will teach my children the truth with more heart. And I will not sweat the small stuff. It's incredible how easy it is to simplify when faced with almost losing something of great value.
And lastly, if ever you, you reading this right now, doubt for a fraction of a second that a loving, living, Heavenly Father exists and knows you, please book mark this post or print it out and reread it. I promise He is there.
I promise He knows you.
He has great plans for you.
He still sends miracles.
Of this I have no doubt.
Showing posts with label miracles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label miracles. Show all posts
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Friday, December 2, 2011
Amazing and busy
Today has been an amazing an busy day. It's too late to go into all the details, but for now, just know that it involves some miracles and then later a party. More on these tomorrow.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Too close for comfort
*********************************WARNING**********************************************
Now on to yesterday's events...........
You know those craft papers that have two layers with the top layer being black and the bottom layer is rainbow and when you scratch the top, black layer off with a bamboo skewer the rainbow layer can be seen?
Beckham loves that stuff. We all do. He was lucky enough to get some for Christmas. Friday night he was scratching away on his bed until we tucked him in. He put the paper and the skewer on the end of the bed and we all forgot about it.
Yesterday, at about 11:30 am, I asked him to go get dressed for the day. Anyone who knows Beckham knows he is all boy and rarely travels in the conventional manner of placing one foot in front of the other. Often he rolls, or "flips", dives, or any other ninja like manner you can think of. Yesterday was no exception.
His dresser is on the far side of his room. Passing his bed to get there he decided to roll/side flip using the end of his bed and his head as leverage. The only problem was, now keep in mind I did not see it happen but he told me what he was doing so I am assuming this is how things came to be, as he placed his hand down he must have put it on the blunt end of the skewer causing the pointed end to pop up. Immediately after his hand went down he put his head down to aid in the "flip" and impaled the skewer into his eye lid!
Thankfully, I was downstairs already when he started crying. I went into his room thinking he had stubbed his toe. When he turned around I could not believe what I was seeing. I quickly surveyed the puncture and determined it was too close to the eye for me to attempt to pull it out. Picking Beckham up, careful about not bumping the skewer, I rushed upstairs calling for Kevin.
When Kevin saw Beckham he took him from me and headed to the car. I called our neighbor's The Messinas, thankfully Carol was able to drop everything and come watch the other three kids. Shortly after I called them I called Grandma Candace to see if she could come watch the kids for an extended period of time. She could, and there are not enough words for how grateful we are to know we could leave them with her all day and they would be well cared for!
We headed to Insta-care.
Let me tell you something, you know how insta-care and the ER have bad reputations for long waits? Yeah, well, when you have something sticking out of your eye there is no wait time.
But they debated about whether to let us back only because they knew they couldn't pull it out, but they were concerned about the skewer moving as we went to the ER. They ended up putting some gauze under the skewer and taping everything down.
What was Beckham doing this whole time? He was being so brave! When it first happened he cried, of course, and asked us to take it out. But once I explained to him that when he was crying his eye was scrunching up and I was afraid it was going to hurt him more he calmed himself right down and was very still. So much so that I told him he must have super powers to be so calm which would make him a super hero to which he factually informed me that, "Mom, Super Heroes don't get things stuck in their eyes." And if he could have rolled his eyes at me, he would have.
When ended up at Primary Childrens Medical Center's ER. And again, no waiting once they saw him.
This time we had many, many, many medical staff come and look at Beckham. Most of them were not on the case, but they all wanted to see.
Thankfully, an opthimologist was in the ER at the time and Dr. Williams came right over. He was able to help Beckham open his eye a little bit and put a eye test chart in front of him. The good news is it missed the eye globe and he can see 20/20.
Even the opthamologist had to take a picture on his phone because his attendee would want to, "know what's going on..." I'm pretty sure he really wanted to say, "see this!"
Here are the pictures
At this point Beckham was in a little more pain so they gave him some morphine. The morphine took the pain away, and slow to communicate, but it also made him sick to his stomach. He told us he was going to throw up, but we were so afraid to sit him up in fear of the skewer being shoved further up that we hesitated and he vomited all over himself. Which lead to the cutting of his shirt because we couldn't very well lift it over his head....what with the stick in his eye and all.
He lamented that that was he favorite shirt, but I promised him I would get him another plain black t-shirt as soon as I could. Kids are so funny about their favorite things.
Now that we knew the eye was OK the next concern was the brain. The angle that the skewer was logged suggested, if it had gone it far enough, there would be some contact with the brain. Off to get a CT scan we went.
Thankfully, (you'll notice I say that a lot in this post....appropriate no?) It stopped short of the brain. Whew!
Basically, if you are adding things up the skewer entered and logged into the ONLY spot that could possibly have minimal damage. Everyone told us how lucky he was. I told them I didn't think it was luck.I strongly believe that this was NOT a coincidence and that he was very much protected and watched over.
They needed to do surgery to take it out because of the fact that the skewer was bamboo and they didn't want to risk leaving any fragments in there to cause infection. The problem is the OR was extremely busy yesterday. They weren't able to get him into surgery until 8:15pm after having the skewer in his eye lid of almost 8 1/2 hours!
Honestly, beside the creepiness factor of looking at my baby and seeing a stick poking out of his face near his eye, the hardest part of yesterday was just how long it was sticking in there. Once we knew the skewer was resting in the "sweet" spot we didn't want to risk moving it even an inch. But it was sticking out so far that if he looked down the end of the skewer nearly hit his chest which would cause it to push up ward. Also, any time he moved his hand we were afraid he would accidentally push the stick up ward as well. Remembering all that you can now imagine the state of high alert Kevin and I were experiencing for all those hours.
When Beckham came out of surgery not only was I relieved that it had gone well (they had to do general anesthesia and that made me nervous. They also had to stitch together one small muscle that got damaged) but I was just SO glad that skewer was out and it no longer had the potential to hurt him any more!
Everyone kept telling us they had never seen a kid so well behaved with such a traumatic thing. He really was so brave and very obedient. He didn't try and pull the skewer out. He didn't complain about the long wait. He was amazing.
By the time he woke up from the anesthesia and was able to eat it was about 10:30. He told me he was going slow with the crackers because he was saving room for the lunch and dinner that he missed. When I told him we weren't going to have lunch and dinner he was just so sad. So I promised him a grilled cheese sandwich when we got home.
Just before he was released from the hospital, I yawned and said, "I am so tired. Beckham are you tired?"
"No, I just woke up from a nap!"
I thought to myself, " I'm so glad to see the old Beckham back."
We finally got home around 12:15 am this morning.
Made a grilled cheese sandwich.
Tucked Beckham into bed.
Offered a prayer of gratitude and fully acknowledged the divine intervention in our lives that day and marveled that even after all of that we got to bring him home nearly unscathed.
Today, Beckham is great. His eye is still swollen shut.
However, that is not slowing him down. Most of the day has been spent with me begging,
"Beckham please stop rolling on the ground."
"Beckham, please stop running....I cannot have you tripping today."
"Beckham just sit when you get to the couch, you don't need a running start to get up!"
We've got one pretty special kid on our hands.....and we'll take him!
Anyone who knows what happened yesterday will probably figure that I would be blogging about it soon. I am, however, also going to post pictures. They are very graphic, but they prove a miracle. One that I don't want to forget and that I want documented. If you don't think you can stomach the pictures, please just email me and I will send you the whole story sans pictures.
******************************************************************************************Now on to yesterday's events...........
You know those craft papers that have two layers with the top layer being black and the bottom layer is rainbow and when you scratch the top, black layer off with a bamboo skewer the rainbow layer can be seen?
Beckham loves that stuff. We all do. He was lucky enough to get some for Christmas. Friday night he was scratching away on his bed until we tucked him in. He put the paper and the skewer on the end of the bed and we all forgot about it.
Yesterday, at about 11:30 am, I asked him to go get dressed for the day. Anyone who knows Beckham knows he is all boy and rarely travels in the conventional manner of placing one foot in front of the other. Often he rolls, or "flips", dives, or any other ninja like manner you can think of. Yesterday was no exception.
His dresser is on the far side of his room. Passing his bed to get there he decided to roll/side flip using the end of his bed and his head as leverage. The only problem was, now keep in mind I did not see it happen but he told me what he was doing so I am assuming this is how things came to be, as he placed his hand down he must have put it on the blunt end of the skewer causing the pointed end to pop up. Immediately after his hand went down he put his head down to aid in the "flip" and impaled the skewer into his eye lid!
Thankfully, I was downstairs already when he started crying. I went into his room thinking he had stubbed his toe. When he turned around I could not believe what I was seeing. I quickly surveyed the puncture and determined it was too close to the eye for me to attempt to pull it out. Picking Beckham up, careful about not bumping the skewer, I rushed upstairs calling for Kevin.
When Kevin saw Beckham he took him from me and headed to the car. I called our neighbor's The Messinas, thankfully Carol was able to drop everything and come watch the other three kids. Shortly after I called them I called Grandma Candace to see if she could come watch the kids for an extended period of time. She could, and there are not enough words for how grateful we are to know we could leave them with her all day and they would be well cared for!
We headed to Insta-care.
Let me tell you something, you know how insta-care and the ER have bad reputations for long waits? Yeah, well, when you have something sticking out of your eye there is no wait time.
But they debated about whether to let us back only because they knew they couldn't pull it out, but they were concerned about the skewer moving as we went to the ER. They ended up putting some gauze under the skewer and taping everything down.
What was Beckham doing this whole time? He was being so brave! When it first happened he cried, of course, and asked us to take it out. But once I explained to him that when he was crying his eye was scrunching up and I was afraid it was going to hurt him more he calmed himself right down and was very still. So much so that I told him he must have super powers to be so calm which would make him a super hero to which he factually informed me that, "Mom, Super Heroes don't get things stuck in their eyes." And if he could have rolled his eyes at me, he would have.
When ended up at Primary Childrens Medical Center's ER. And again, no waiting once they saw him.
This time we had many, many, many medical staff come and look at Beckham. Most of them were not on the case, but they all wanted to see.
Thankfully, an opthimologist was in the ER at the time and Dr. Williams came right over. He was able to help Beckham open his eye a little bit and put a eye test chart in front of him. The good news is it missed the eye globe and he can see 20/20.
Even the opthamologist had to take a picture on his phone because his attendee would want to, "know what's going on..." I'm pretty sure he really wanted to say, "see this!"
Here are the pictures
At this point Beckham was in a little more pain so they gave him some morphine. The morphine took the pain away, and slow to communicate, but it also made him sick to his stomach. He told us he was going to throw up, but we were so afraid to sit him up in fear of the skewer being shoved further up that we hesitated and he vomited all over himself. Which lead to the cutting of his shirt because we couldn't very well lift it over his head....what with the stick in his eye and all.
He lamented that that was he favorite shirt, but I promised him I would get him another plain black t-shirt as soon as I could. Kids are so funny about their favorite things.
Now that we knew the eye was OK the next concern was the brain. The angle that the skewer was logged suggested, if it had gone it far enough, there would be some contact with the brain. Off to get a CT scan we went.
Thankfully, (you'll notice I say that a lot in this post....appropriate no?) It stopped short of the brain. Whew!
Basically, if you are adding things up the skewer entered and logged into the ONLY spot that could possibly have minimal damage. Everyone told us how lucky he was. I told them I didn't think it was luck.I strongly believe that this was NOT a coincidence and that he was very much protected and watched over.
They needed to do surgery to take it out because of the fact that the skewer was bamboo and they didn't want to risk leaving any fragments in there to cause infection. The problem is the OR was extremely busy yesterday. They weren't able to get him into surgery until 8:15pm after having the skewer in his eye lid of almost 8 1/2 hours!
Honestly, beside the creepiness factor of looking at my baby and seeing a stick poking out of his face near his eye, the hardest part of yesterday was just how long it was sticking in there. Once we knew the skewer was resting in the "sweet" spot we didn't want to risk moving it even an inch. But it was sticking out so far that if he looked down the end of the skewer nearly hit his chest which would cause it to push up ward. Also, any time he moved his hand we were afraid he would accidentally push the stick up ward as well. Remembering all that you can now imagine the state of high alert Kevin and I were experiencing for all those hours.
When Beckham came out of surgery not only was I relieved that it had gone well (they had to do general anesthesia and that made me nervous. They also had to stitch together one small muscle that got damaged) but I was just SO glad that skewer was out and it no longer had the potential to hurt him any more!
Everyone kept telling us they had never seen a kid so well behaved with such a traumatic thing. He really was so brave and very obedient. He didn't try and pull the skewer out. He didn't complain about the long wait. He was amazing.
By the time he woke up from the anesthesia and was able to eat it was about 10:30. He told me he was going slow with the crackers because he was saving room for the lunch and dinner that he missed. When I told him we weren't going to have lunch and dinner he was just so sad. So I promised him a grilled cheese sandwich when we got home.
Just before he was released from the hospital, I yawned and said, "I am so tired. Beckham are you tired?"
"No, I just woke up from a nap!"
I thought to myself, " I'm so glad to see the old Beckham back."
We finally got home around 12:15 am this morning.
Made a grilled cheese sandwich.
Tucked Beckham into bed.
Offered a prayer of gratitude and fully acknowledged the divine intervention in our lives that day and marveled that even after all of that we got to bring him home nearly unscathed.
Today, Beckham is great. His eye is still swollen shut.
However, that is not slowing him down. Most of the day has been spent with me begging,
"Beckham please stop rolling on the ground."
"Beckham, please stop running....I cannot have you tripping today."
"Beckham just sit when you get to the couch, you don't need a running start to get up!"
We've got one pretty special kid on our hands.....and we'll take him!
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