The First Day of Last Spring

A year ago today, Maria phoned me at work from Duke Hospital to let me know that she had been hearing our son’s doctors suggesting that testing begin to have Noah put on the heart transplant list. For nearly two months prior, our family had been torn as Maria stayed with Noah in the hospital and I stayed home an hour away trying to keep our daughter Autumn on as much of a normal schedule as possible. Now, with the news that a transplant might be the best course of action, the end of that family separation period seemed to fade from our sight. This weighed on all of us as we all needed each other; most notably, Autumn needed her mother and Maria needed her daughter.

More importantly, the new transplant chatter meant that the treatment Noah was undergoing for hypoplastic left heart syndrome was not going to work out for him because of a leaky heart valve. We were faced with thoughts like, "if his first surgery isn’t going to get him through to his second surgery in the current treatment, and the average wait for heart transplant is two to four months..." and, "what are the risks of transplant and how do they compare to the risks of the current treatment?" It was a lot to take in and Maria seemed to absorb it faster than I did as she was obviously very shaken when she called me. I tried to comfort her from my office 60 miles away, telling her that the doctors knew best what to do and that everything would be OK. Sometime after I hung up with her, though, it started sinking into me. I can remember struggling to hold back tears as I told my supervisor that I needed to be at the hospital. The next time I spoke with Maria that day, I was within minutes of the hospital.

Today, a year later, the terror we felt then is only a memory. It’s awe-inspiring for me to look back at the path God chose for us. He was right there when I thought otherwise just as he is now.