Joshua has had a tough week this week. His RBC count has been slowly declining during the last few weeks, so we took him to our hospital (Mineral Community Hospital) in Superior where I work and gave him two units of blood and some albumin to boost his protein a bit. We did that on Thurs. and didn't get him back home until 1:30 a.m. on Fri. Josh does much better at home in his own air mattress bed. Since he has not been taking his meds orally very well, we have had to switch all his meds over to admininstering them via IV. Normally they don't let families do that, but our Dr. seems to have confidence that Cindy and I are capable of doing it. He tells us that we run an ICU right out of Josh's bedroom which I guess we do when we think of all the meds, breathing treatments, oxygen, suctioning, and everything else we have to do for him generally on an hourly basis.
Cindy had a spiritual experience early Fri. morning that testified of how the Lord has been watching out and supporting Joshua and his caregivers. We had just gotten him settled in after returning back from the hospital at 2 a.m. on Friday when about 3 hours later while Cindy was trying to flush his pic line, everything just seemed to be blocked off and it wouldn't flush. Basically, if his line had of stayed that way, there would have been no method of administering his seizure meds which would have meant an immediate trip to Missoula to place a new pic line. It was the last thing we wanted to do especially since we were all so tired from having just returned from the hospital with him. So, Cindy said a prayer and prayed that his line would open and that she would be able to give his meds again. After her prayer, she flushed his line with some heparin again and it opened right up. Generally when an IV line is blocked like that, the IV is lost and a new one has to be placed. For some reason, Joshua is supposed to tarry here on this earth at this time. He life could have easily been taken on many occasions. Well, I have definitely learned a lot about life from this experience and we have certainly developed a stronger testimony of the plan of salvation and that this life is just a short time compared to the eternities. Being able to serve in the capacity of his caregivers has been an honor and privilege for us! I believe his calling and election has certainly been made sure!