Focusing on God

Yesterday was a tough day for the Santimaws but once we got home and wrote out the days blogs we were encouraged by God to stand "in the Lord" and not in our own might. Proverbs teaches us to "trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. I think we found ourselves in need of hearing that verse again. Amazing how God can use a verse that we know and have heard many times but forget when we need to recall it. The doctors and nurses do some wonderful things but it is God who is ultimately sustaining Isaac's life right now. No human will can keep him alive unless God allows it to happen.

Isaac's health is sustaining right now and it looks as though he is going to be like most EMCO babies and stay on ECMO for 2-3 weeks. That is sitting better with us for the time being and like I said we are waiting on the Lord not man but we can obviously see that God does not want him off ECMO yet. Could change tomorrow, could change in weeks to come. Lori and I have decided to try to keep the stress to a limit and not burn the (proverbial) midnight oil. Not that we are there during the night, although next week will be night visits due to the fact that I have to go back to work, but we have spent periods of many hours up at Georgetown anticipating him coming off of ECMO. We still have Christian and Aaron to love and they need their mommy and daddy too. Isaac will probably have some of the ECMO equipment rotated before the weekend is out though as a precautionary maintenance procedure and he will probably see some stress from that but pray that he makes it through.

I wanted to comment on today's photo. Sitting beside Lori is one of the nurses. Jean is a senior nurse at Georgetown and has been doing great things her whole career to include research, education and NICU care. She was the first face I saw when I arrived to the NICU center at Georgetown and I think she sensed that I was Isaac's father. I could barely get out that fact while I was still grieving over my son's condition. Every time she sees us in the NICU she is an encouragement to us with her personality and genuine care for us as well as our son. She gets paid to care for Isaac but has been a real blessing to us as well. All the nurses and especially Isaac's doctor have been a source of comfort during this stressful event. Praise God Isaac is still alive. We are getting to know him in small ways and are thankful for that.