The Ultimate Gift

What a day.

Mason was pretty fussy last night.  The phone rang at a little after 10:00 pm, and i was ready to choke the person on the other end.  Then I saw the name on the caller id.

One of Masons many doctors was calling.  He says it looks like we may have a match.  He tells us to get our stuff together and he will call us back in a few minutes.  Fifteen long agonizing minutes later, he calls back.  It's go time.

We load up and head out for the usually hour long drive to TCH.  We arrive around 11:30 pm and check in at the ER.  We made a whole bunch of phone calls and had an army of supporters there before too long.

As usual, things never happen the way you would expect.  I thought we'd get rushed in and they would take him on up and perform this miraculous life saving procedure all within a few hours.  Not exactly.  We spent all night getting checked in, getting vital signs and getting set up in a room.  Roughly 08:00 am this morning, they finally take him up and start a very long day.

We were kept well informed by the staff.  We had hourly updates as to the progress of the surgery.  They notified us when the donor heart had arrived in time to see it make it's entry to the hospital.  It was raining that day.  I stood out in the rain and watched an ambulance come into the ER area and several guys jumped out the back with a regular igloo cooler.  Just like some construction workers lunchbox, only it wasn't covered in dirt and grease.

Ahead of these guys with "the package", were security guards and staff that held doors open and held an elevator open and ready for the trip upstairs to the operating room.  Those guys never even had to slow down.

After the longest 13 hours of my life, the surgery was complete.  What happened next is probably the most amazing thing I have ever witnessed.  There were many people in there that saw the same thing and will tell you the same story I'm about to tell you.

When we got he news that the new heart was beating in Mason, we all stood and joined hands for prayer.  As we finished the prayer, as we said "Amen", the sky opened up.  The sky was full of deep dark rain clouds and it opened up.  It opened up and the sun shown through a hole on those clouds right into that waiting room we were in.  The sun was shining in there brighter than it has ever shown before.  Then, just as it had opened up, the clouds resumed their job of raining on the city.

I have no doubt that that was God letting us know that He was with us and that everything was gonna be ok.

Seven days later, we are discharged from the hospital to spend a week at the Ronald McDonald House.  Seven days after that, we went home with the Ultimate Gift.  We were even famous.  Made the front page of the newspaper on Christmas Day, 2002.


http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/2002_3612215/a-child-s-christmas-miracle-the-family-of-a-young.html





We still do not know who the donor was.  We just know that he was an angel sent by the Lord.