Cast off .... Contact Guard On

I really don't know how families do it.  I don't know how families of very sick children stay in the hospital for an extended period of time.  I am so exhausted.  In the past I was exhausted from worry.  Now I am exhausted from slothishness.  Lincoln is really doing great and it looks like we might even leave on Thursday.  We're very lucky, so many  families stay so much longer.  Take Bill and Jess for example (they follow our blog), Jess was hospitalized for ten weeks and spent some of that time in a coma.  Do I have that right, Bill?  One of our roommates at Rusk was there four years ago for six months and for this stay they're going on four months. This same ten year old boy just came down with a bone infection while they were there so who knows how much longer they'll have to stay.  I just met a young man yesterday who has lived at several different rehab facilities, after coming out of a coma - he couldn't remember how long he'd been in a coma.  His mother is a bartender.  She used to stay with him all day and then go to work at night.  Everyday and night for years. Two of our roommates were paraplegics, both young people with doting parents.  Both sets of parents are waiting for their sons to "come back" to them.   I forgot to mention our stay in PICU where one of our roommates was a six month old baby, the size of a newborn, who has leukemia.  One of our PICU roommates was a nine year old boy with epilepsy and pneumonia.  He is from Uruguay, his father spends all day and night at his bedside, the boy could barely breathe.  The last I heard from his father it looked like doctors expected his son to stay for at least another six weeks.  Of all of the places we've stayed during this journey, Lincoln was the healthiest, or the patient with the best prognosis.  As healthy people, we sometimes take our health for granted.  There is a whole other world out there where kids are sick and families call the hospital "home".  Lincoln is getting better everyday.  Thank you for your HUGE part in this.  Please keep these people in your prayers now, they really, really need them.