A Prayer Request

Published: March 9, 2011Posted in: Acts of Love, Prayers
A Prayer Request

My poor health is taking a heavy toll on my children.  My youngest son suffered for more than a day with a severe asthma attack and pneumonia before I got him to the hospital.  Struggling to sustain things is starting to seem very selfish.

My kidneys have healed, but the arthritis, fatigue, and illness continue.  On the weekend, I tried to rest while my boys played in the backyard.  My older son dug a hole behind the shed big enough to lie down in.  In the meantime, the house filled with ungodly amounts of dirt, complementing the existing mess.  On Sunday, my mother hosted a birthday party for my five year old.  Like me, he was coughing and congested.  My fatigue was so intense, I had to hold onto something to sit upright.  We walked in the door, into my mother’s lavish three story gated estate, and she immediately dragged my boys off for nicer shirts and combed hair in preparation for photos.  She hushed everyone as we sat around the dining room table for cake and ice cream.  She succeeded in keeping the boys so quiet that at one point, everyone was bored, and she joked about turning on a radio.  It was the most grown up birthday “party” I’ve ever seen for a five year old.  I badly wished I had the strength to take him to Chuck E. Cheese.  After everyone was done eating, my mom brought my son to the front door and wheeled out a new bicycle complete with a red bow.  My son has a bike, a very nice bike, and it fits him perfectly… something I told her before she bought it, but she wanted to impress him.

Such is her way.  Lavish to impress but tight and reserved to nurture.  My son responded with little emotion.  She put him on the bike, which was far too tall, and steered him around the driveway.  In the meantime, I collapsed on a chair and felt as though the life were draining from me.  My brother and grandmother put their arms around me.  Breathing was hard.  My lungs have filled with fluid.

We went home, and I fell on the floor.  I asked my mother if she would cover the expense of continued visits with her doctor, but she never responded.  She just encouraged me to eat more.  I have gotten into the habit of “making a case” for my poor health, which makes positive affirmations challenging.

The boys played outside again, and I noticed that my five year old was coughing and wheezing hard.  I stumbled into the kitchen and struggled to cook macaroni and baked beans.  I couldn’t breath, couldn’t think straight, could barely stand, but I managed to cook everything and spoon it onto two plates.  I sunk to the kitchen floor, shaking, and called my older son to carry the plates to the table.  I could hardly speak.  He wandered in and grabbed the plates and took one to my five year old, who was still coughing and wheezing.  I dragged myself to bed.

All night, I could hear my son struggling for air and coughing.  Neither of us slept.  He thrashed and sweated, and I tried to comfort him.  I was all out of medicine.

In the morning, I got my older son to school and spent three hours on the phone trying to find a doctor for my son.  State benefits for uninsured children are decent on paper, nearly absent in practice.  I found one walk in clinic with a two hour wait.  I packed a bag with books and stuffed animals.  At the clinic, I was not done registering at the front desk before they took my son to the examination room and got him in a breathing mask with vaporized asthma medication.  Three full treatments and one shot of steroids later, and he was still struggling for air.  They admitted him to the hospital, where he spent the next twenty four hours under constant care.

Lying in the bed beside him, watching the blood oxygen monitor, I felt deep sadness and fear.  The way a mother would feel, I suppose, if she wanted to stand between her child and a grizzly bear, and she couldn’t run fast enough to come between them.

My ex-husband called from Holland not long ago, and I let him have it.  I told him his absence from their lives was despicable.  He said he had no choice.  He was so unhappy in his job, but he found his dream career in Europe, and now he is happy again.  “What would you have done,” I asked, “if I hadn’t been in this world?”  He said, “If you weren’t in this world, they would be in Holland going to a good school, getting good health care…”  Before he could finish, I cursed at him.

In the hospital, his words rung in my ears.

I sent him a message that our son was in the hospital, and I never heard back.  I didn’t sleep.  My throat was swollen and sore, my lungs very congested, and I vascillated between chills and hot flashes.  I suspect that I also have pneumonia, but the state offers no medical care for mothers.

Please send us your prayers.  They will be felt.  I know there is love all around.  Even now, there are moments when the pain and fear suddenly part and some very blissful light shines down and fills the room so intensely and with such presence, I’m in awe.

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