Robbie with his sister Bethany (left) and his Wornock cousins, Abby & Katie (right)
God’s blessings to you all. I’m sitting in Robbie’s room in Neuro next to my sister Donna and brother-in-law Carter. Robbie is resting and the room is quiet with the soft whispered prayers of two New Heights prayer warriors on their knees next to his bed.
Yesterday was by far the worst day we’ve had. The enemy and father of chaos was undoubtably at work as Tanja and I along with at least two other family members wrestled with a pain racked young boy throughout the day. His pain caused him to desperately seek relief from any and everything that was causing him discomfort including trying to rip out feeding tubes and IVs. He was literally out of his mind in pain. We have been so blessed with great nurses with the notable exception being yesterday. Our nurse was lethargic, clueless and just plain lazy and the whole nursing team wasn’t helping us much.
We asked for a doctor in the late afternoon because we knew something was not right. They just could not let a boy be in this much pain for this long (72 hours). After almost three hours of not seeing a doctor after asking, my brother-in-law Cater went out a got in their face a little bit. Throughout this time I was drenched in sweat and Robbie’s urine working my very hardest to help him without hurting him. Finally Tanja just “lost it” and went into the hall screaming and weeping and begging for some help. As you can imagine, that got their attention.
We found out soon thereafter that they had entered in the wrong doctor contact information for Robbie. The right doctor had called in to correct the wrong entry and they entered in the wrong information again. On top of that, earlier in the day the nurse had taken blood using the IV tube. It never looked right after that and we, 3 or 4 times, asked him about it. He just blew us off and said, “Oh, it’s fine, don’t worry about it” but he never tried to flush it to see if it was. Well, after Tanja’s episode, the head nursing coordinator came in and immediately said, “His IV is not good”, and they checked it and it wasn’t, so it is entirely possible that he was not getting the meds he was supposed to throughout the day. When the correct doctor was finally contacted, she was visibly upset by everything. We know our battle is not against flesh and blood so we hold no ill-will or unforgiveness towards these workers but we are thankful that they are keeping on top of things now.
He had a second MRI last night and the swelling in his brain has not gone down but it has not increased which is very good news. His spine looks fine which is also good news. His night and his day today has been much better. Yesterday, I asked for prayers simply for relief from pain and today these prayers of yours are being answered. We pray the worst is over and ask you to join us in that. Pray for the swelling to go down. Pray for emotional strength for Tanja and I and for continued faith in Jehovah Rafah, the God who heals. Pray for our girls and for strength for our extended family who are helping so diligently. This was to be the second day of our big family reunion but instead, our family is reuniting around us.
Bless you, bless you, bless you for the genuine God-given love that you have for my beloved son.
Because of His grace,
Ken