Keep up the fight
This morning in school Bostyn was asked to write about her
first memory. When she told me what she had written—about her eye infection
when she was almost four—I looked at my phone and realized that today marks 10
years since she sat in a hospital bed and fought for her life. I will never
forget the miracles that took place that brought her home weeks later, and the
many earthly and heavenly beings that helped her keep fighting.
The second day . . . when her other eye begin
to close, I remember her begging for us to help her. She was gasping for air,
and her neck was getting bigger by the minute. There was nothing we could do
and the doctors had even begun to have fear in their eyes, as they talked about
the infection’s rapid rate, every one of them coming to visit with little or no
answers at what was taking over our little girl’s body.
At one point I found myself in the hall tucked
into a little corner outside our room, crying so hard I couldn’t breathe. A
doctor walked into the room and brought another one out. “I don’t know if this
one is going to make it, if that infection keeps spreading, we are going to
have to put tubes all down her neck and try to drain some of it out in the
morning, or she isn’t going to be able to get oxegen.” They didn’t know I had
heard them. I sat there helpless, picturing my little girl with tubes down her
neck and her other eye so swollen she could no longer see us.
I prayed harder in that quiet little corner
than I had ever prayed in my life. Moments later I found myself standing in
front of a whole room of nurses, at first I quietly started begging for their
help, then words—I still don’t know how I knew what to say—began flying out of
my mouth. I pointed at one and told her what kind of specialist to go call, and
another to get me the town’s infectious disease specialist... and on and on
until I had given everyone in that room a job to do. For a few seconds they all
sat there and stared at me like I was crazy—and to be honest . . . I might have
been. I looked around and said, “Now. She needs you to go now.” Within 20
minutes her room was full of specialists I didn’t know existed. They worked
together and found the infection to be something different than she had been
treated for so far. By morning she had stopped gasping for air and her other
eye never did close all the way.
Sometimes we have to just have faith, and other
times we have to fight. I have never seen anyone fight so hard as my little
girl did ten years ago. She was a little warrior. Her eyes have never been the
same; she can’t go anywhere without her thick glasses or contacts, but besides
a little scar that she still carries . . . you would never know the fight she
had to battle to be here.
We don’t know what people are going through, or what they will yet be asked to endure. We don’t always know what their stories are, or the little parts of their journeys that make them who they are today.
I am grateful for Bostyn and her warrior heart. I have watched her endure this unplanned life with so much grace and wisdom. I know this moment, when she was young, prepared her for many more fights she would be asked to champion just two years later. She is a light for us all, and probably one of the funniest people I know. So glad I know you Bostyn! Thank you for always reminding me that miracles are real, angels are near, and to always keep up the fight.
Posts
