J & M plus 3: September 2009

The smell of rain

A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. She was still groggy from surgery. Her husband, David, held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news. That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency Cesarean to deliver couple's new daughter, Dana Lu Blessing. At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor's soft words dropped like bombs. "I don't think she's going to make it," he said, as kindly as he could. "There's only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one." Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Dana would likely face if she survived. She would never walk, she would never talk, she would probably be blind, and she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation, and on and on.

"No! No!" was all Diana could say. She and David, with their 5-year-old son Dustin, had long dreamed of the day they would have a daughter to become a family of four. Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away. As those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana. Because Dana's underdeveloped nervous system was essentially 'raw', the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort, so they couldn't even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests to offer the strength of their love. All they could do, as Dana struggled alone beneath the ultraviolet light in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl. There was never a moment when Dana suddenly grew stronger. But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and an ounce of strength there. At last, when Dana turned two months old, her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time. And two months later, though doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much less living any kind of normal life, were next to zero, Dana went home from the hospital, just as her mother had predicted.

Five years later, when Dana was a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life. She showed no signs whatsoever of any mental or physical impairment. Simply,she was everything a little girl can be and more. But that happy ending is far from the end of her story.

One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving, Texas, Dana was sitting in her mother's lap in the bleachers of a local ballpark where her brother Dustin's baseball team was practicing. As always, Dana was chattering nonstop with her mother and several other adults sitting nearby when she suddenly fell silent. Hugging her arms across her chest, little Dana asked, "Do you smell that?" Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, "Yes, it smells like rain." Dana closed her eyes and again asked, "Do you smell that?" Once again, her mother replied, "Yes, I think we're about to get wet. It smells like rain." Still caught in the moment, Dana shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced, "No, it smells like Him. It smells like God when you lay your head on His chest." Tears blurred Diana's eyes as Dana happily hopped down to play with the other children. Before the rains came, her daughter's words confirmed what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts, all along. During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Dana on His chest and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.

This is an email that was sent to me that I wanted to share. I usually hate it when people send me emails about a sick child or telling me something bad is going to happen if I don't. I of course don't believe them but they bring back memories of Trey's strokes and the pain of having to call family and frinds to tell them that our baby might not make it, to come and tell him goodbye. That was 5 years ago, he is now 6! Although he has issues and delays he is here, he is happy, he thankfully doesn't remember and may never really know. Even now MRI's/CAT Scans say he should be a vegetable and he is so far from it. Jason sent me this email, he knows I hate them, but I know he wouldn't send me something like this unless it touched him and he knew it would do the same for me, there is a message in it. I know that when Trey was going through all that he went through, God was holding him when we couldn't and even when we could. I pray that of all the things I hope he doesn't remember that the "smell" of God's arms around him is one that he does remember.

I don’t know if Dana’s story is true, I am sure it is for someone, but ours is.

As most of you know Trey spent a few days in the hospital last week. It started with a fever and a cough, then fever and throwing up. Because of Trey's Moya Moya status we, along with the doctors, have to make sure he doesn't get dehydrated. Because he had had, off and on, a low grade fever and then started throwing up and wouldn't drink the pediatrician decided we would be on the safe side and put him in EAMC for fluids. They ran a few test, flu-negative (more than once), strep-negative (more than once), CBC, Mycoplasma-(ding ding ding) positive. His tests revealed he has Mycoplasma Pneumonia. Which is like a bacterial/respiratory pneumonia, sort of common in school age kids (kind of like walking pneumonia?). In the hospital he spent half of his days being Trey but a little more calm and sedate and the other half he was sick and sleeping. Saturday he started getting a rash, not a bad one but we aren't really sure what it is from. They put him on Zithromax for the pneumonia so the doctor discontinued it, Trey actually has Atypical Mycoplasma Pneumonia-not exhibiting normal symptoms of the pneumonia, so he said we would see if the 3 doses of the med knocked it out. Rash is on his tummy/chest and back and on his arms. Tonight he started breaking out on his face. I don't know if he rubbed his face against something that irritated it or if this is part of the rash from Saturday. Otherwise he has been okay. He stayed home today because he wasn't feeling well this morning but by 1030 he told me he was ready to go to school. The plan is to send him to school tomorrow unless the rash is worse then we will be going back to the doctors.

I wanted to include a picture I took of him while he was feeling well on Saturday. He wanted to help the nice lady that came in to clean his room. She let him help mop the floor, they became fast friends and he drew her a picture.