While I was pregnant with Chase, his small intestine somehow twisted around itself cutting off blood supply to the intestines. When he was born on July 3, 2008 by emergency C-section his belly was distended and he vomitted green bile shortly after he was born. He was immediately rushed to a nearby NICU. The prayers started rolling then.
At first the doctors thought that he just had a block and that it could be easily removed. But shortly after this "prediction" we got the call. The pediatric surgeon did some X-rays and noticed that Chase had malrotation volvulus (twisting had cut off the blood supply) and that surgery was needed immediately to see how much damage was done. So on July 4 Chase went in for his first surgery. The outcome, heartwrenching......none of his small intestines had survived. Option: take another look in 48 hours to see if any had recovered. If not, there was no hope. More prayers lifted up. So on July 6 Chase went in for his second surgery. Again, no good tissue. We later found out that all of his small intestines were not only dead, but starting to decompose. Options: Try to keep him alive until a transplant could be performed and could only give us a 25% survival rate and a really hard life or let him go home to his Father in heaven. Now not everyone may agree with our choice, but we are deeply rooted in our faith and we chose to let our little boy go home. This is not to say that we gave up. We started praying and we got a really big, big, BIG chain of prayer warriors all praying with us. We were asking for a miracle, because at this point that was the only hope we had.
He was immediately taken off any nutrition and all antibiotics. The only thing our little baby was getting was sugar water to keep him from dehydration (which they later wanted to also take him off of) and heavy pain meds to stop any pain. According to the doctors, the dead tissue inside of our son would become infected and eventually take his life. And this all would happen within a few days.
After nine grueling days of wondering every second if this was the moment our son would leave us, Chase was in great health. No infection had set in, his heart rate was perfect, his breathing was perfect, and he never got a fever. After much discussion, we decided to take our son to another hospital for a second opinion. So immediately we left for All Childrens' Hospital in St. Petersburg, FL.
After an overnight stay, on July 15th Chase went in for his third surgery. A lot of surgery for a nine-day old little man. But our little frog is a fighter and he had the love of God on his side. The surgeon opened up our little guy and saw NO DEAD BOWEL!!!!!!
This is not to say that this was the end of his battle, by no means. But God had given us a true, undeniable miracle. Where there once was dead bowels there was living, thriving tissue. We are forever grateful to Him and continuously praising Him for His awesome power.
The rest of Chase's story will be told at a later time. He is now 7 months old and a happy, healthy little blessing. We just recently were given the final verdict that he does in fact have auditory neuropathy. We don't know much about this yet, but will let everyone know when we do.
Psalm 18:19b "God rescued me, because He delighted in me."
