And just because everyone else could see that he A) wasn’t running a fever, and B) wasn’t feeling rotten, and C) was slowly getting better, that doesn’t mean that as a Mom I felt ok with just leaving the situation be. And honestly, it probably would be different with Sonora. Just the other week she had a sinus infection, and was running a fever for consecutive nights in a row, and I just forced her to drink oregano tea around the clock, and she healed up just fine. I never worried a day about it. Even when green and yellow goo was leaking from her eye. I knew she’d be ok.
I have a really difficult time finding that peace when Jake gets sick. In fact, I always assume the worst with Jake. As a Mother, there are certain experiences that you just never get over. I have gone through inner healing, I have given it to God, I have forgiven everyone in the situation to the sky and back, but every time Jake’s health is tweaked I stop in my tracks. I look behind me, and I remember a very frightening time in my life.
Some of you have heard the testimony. I personally never get tired of hearing it. When Jake was 17 days old, he was admitted to the hospital. To an ordinary room, at first. That was until a routine blood draw revealed that he had a condition called acidosis, which to my understanding meant his body was putting acid into his blood. Usually pointing to the liver or kidneys not doing their job. I remember them saying, “We’re going to room 132,” and I called my grandma and told her where to meet us.
We took Jake to the emergency room because he had a cold. We had taken him to urgent care that night, to the doctor the day before, and the ER again the night before. Something about a Momma’s intuition, not just mine, but my Mom’s too. Something was not right. At urgent care that night, I begged the attending to admit him. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t eat, we took him last minute because he choked so hard on mucous that he turned blue. My Mom held him upside down and sucked it out of his throat while he gasped for air. This is a two week old infant we are talking about. I’ve had to forgive the urgent care doctor many times. The ER was a trip made at 4 am, after spending an entire night taking shifts of holding Jake upright so he could breathe, though he couldn’t eat, and therefore wouldn’t sleep. Safe to say, the longest night of my life. There was just a moment, I’m not sure who pushed through all of the doubt around us, me or my Mom but we just knew that this baby belonged in the hospital. We didn’t even strap him in the car seat, we couldn’t, because he was wheezing so bad he couldn’t catch his breath. It was 4am and I sat in the back seat of that red corolla with my baby while my Mom ran every stoplight in Concord to get him to the ER as quickly as possible. They took him right away. He wasn’t getting enough oxygen, and he was confirmed for RSV and Pneumonia. That was when they ran the blood test. The nurse took it, and read the results and shook her head. I will never forget this because they called her from the Neontal unit to take the blood because the regular nurse couldn’t get the IV in. Taking blood to began with was a challenge, now they were going to have to do it again. I saw her face as she read the second results, and I knew something was wrong. Without even telling me, a different nurse came in and pushed a hospital bed that I lay on with my very ill two week old baby to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. The pediatric attending, and the endocrinologist came in tell us what was really going on. The truth was, RSV and Pneumonia was sort of a no brainer: oxygen, and the nasal aspirator every couple of hours, he would be fine. But they explained that because of these things, we were able to discover an underlying condition that was causing acid to build up in Jake’s body. I wish I could remember the number, but I do remember the doctor telling me that if an adult had these numbers they would be dead, he was only alive because newborns are just hardy. Since Jake had been tested for all of the most common metabolic disorders at birth (all babies are) it can only be assumed that he had one of the more uncommon ones. His liver count was way off, so I remember that many of the disorders they told me about were associated with the liver, although it could have been anything.
There are millions of amino acids, there are hundreds of metabolic disorders. I read through the list of the secondary most common ones, they all resulted in death, mental retardation, or kidney or liver transplant. My life changed drastically that week. Jake had to stop nursing at once. He had to stop eating entirely. They put him on a “sugar drip” basically, but then had to check his blood sugar around the clock. That means every hour they took one of those “finger prickers” and stuck him in the bottom of the foot. By day two both of his feet looked like pin cushions. Sometimes they’d have to do it twice because his blood would clot off too fast. Then they had to recheck his “blood gases” several times a day to check the acid, which was always a vein draw. So time after time he was stuck with needles in the arms, and ankles, and elbow, and feet, and every place you can imagine that they could find a vein. And if blood didn’t come out, they’d try again.
By day 2 I got to hold him. He was attached to so many wires I couldn’t even move. Every time I sat back to rest (because I was thoroughly exhausted from worrying constantly about my baby, and having to get up through the night to pump so I could keep my milk supply up) something would beep at me that Jake came undone.
Of course we took him in on Friday morning, so we wouldn’t get results until after the weekend, so it was the longest several days of my life. The results had to be sent off to a center specializing in metabolic disorders. I know what apostle Paul meant when he suffered so much that he despaired of his own life. I got to a point where healing seemed so hopeless that I stopped praying for it, and instead that Jesus would just come. Right now. To make matters worse, I didn’t have a spouse. I had a GREAT support system, but they found their way home at around 8:00 at night so they could come back early the next morning. I was by myself half of the stay, at only 20 years old. I can remember being in the bathroom thinking, I am still bleeding from birth, and now my baby is going to die.
“I remove the curse of death from Jake in Jesus’ name. I cover him in the blood of Jesus.”
I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. I don’t think anyone really did, in terms of warfare and such. But that’s why I love God, because I know he honored our most basic cry for help. Several of us all held hands around Jake’s bed, and we just took turns praying for this prayer. My step-dad is a very tender, Godly man and my Mom has always suspected he has the gift of healing that helped solidify this prayer. I don’t know if I even believed it, or thought it would heal him, I just knew I was out of options. If God didn’t come through, it was not going to be good.
Jake started feeling a bit better almost instantly. They asked if we could start him on some special formula for babies with Acidemia, a type of metabolic disorder. I don’t even know what was in this stuff, but it looked and smelled like concrete. And Jake ate it so fast, he had only had one other bottle of pedialite before that. I remember Jake cried after he drank the bottle. I hit the emergency button so the nurses came running.
“What’s wrong?”
“He just cried!”
“Well that’s ok…”
“No, you don’t understand, he never cries. He is the easiest baby, he never screams like that.”
“That formula is probably just really hard on his stomach.”
More tears.
I will never forget the next day. I woke up at 4 am to pump, and just had to check on Jake. When I went into the PICU (which even in the short time I was there, they were like family), the nurse pulled me inside his room to tell me that his IV infiltrated. Not good, if it had to be reinserted they would have to shave a patch of his hair (his beautiful black hair!) off and place an IV in his scalp because all of his other good veins had collapsed. Then she said that his blood check from midnight was so much better, the doctor might not even need to place an IV again. We’re talking about a baby that was being poked around the clock (at that point his blood sugar was getting checked every couple of hours), and all of the sudden he wasn’t even going to need an IV? So I checked on him. He was sleeping so peacefully and I don’t even remember what I was thinking, I just remember crying and knowing that God had let that IV fall out. And then my parents showed up that morning, and we took pictures galore of a happy, vibrant little Jake. By that night, the doctor told me that I could nurse him again. Why not? He was completely normal at that point, taking up room in the PICU, they told us. He moved to a regular room for two nights before they sent him home. If I remember correctly (all I remember is that I knew his blood test would be normal), his blood test came back with some flawed qualities, but it was inconclusive. So we brought him back to the hospital to have more blood drawn to send off again. It came back normal.
All I know is God healed him. The blood of Jesus is no joke, it brought my son back from the dead. There are witnesses, we saw it. The details are so fuzzy to me now because it was outrageously traumatic. But the feelings are still there, I have to give them to God every time Jake gets sick. A miracle is a coveted thing, I am grateful for it every day. But sometimes in my heart I feel like having a miracle was so inconclusive. He just got better. In a day. If I think as a human being, by the world’s standards, sometimes I feel crazy. I have taken him to the doctor before with a cold and asked them to check his blood gases. They act like I’m an idiot, but the truth is, I don’t know if I’ll ever be normal again. I would like to think that I can be ok with Jake getting a fever every once in a while, or having a puffy cheek of unknown origin.
It just never feels right. I know I have got to remember the blood of Jesus, what I’ve seen it do, what I know it has the power to accomplish. Last night I laid hands on Jake’s cheek, anointed him with oil, and prayed over him. I prayed the blood of Jesus over him and since it’s Easter season, the whole experience made me weep. Because I am so grateful for the blood of Jesus, not just because once I saw it heal my son, but because I know it will heal again. I know that I don’t have to live in fear or open those doors again, but God knows I try, and Hell knows it’s my greatest weakness.
So Easter is my favorite holiday. Some say it’s pagan, and full of empty traditions…maybe so. But the last couple of days while Jake has been sick I have been so aware of the price Jesus paid for me. So aware. So grateful beyond words. I will never stop thanking Him for Jake’s life. I ultimately came to find my true, lasting salvation through that experience, so I tell Jake that he really is the greatest gift God ever gave me, not just when he was born, but when I thought I might lose him…and by the blood of Jesus, I got to keep him. I used to think that Jake's healing came for my birthday. He was released on the 17th of March, six days before my 21st birthday. The funny thing about that birthday is that it fell on Easter that year....now more than ever I understand the significance. I love you, Jake.
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