Elijah - an Angel Story

It's been more than a week since my last post and I have much to share the short is that damage that the seizures caused Elijah's body was too much for his body to handle and he suffered total liver and kidney failure and massive brain damage - and was not expected to live 24 hours and so we gathered the family and let him go to Jesus when his ventilator was turned off to allow him to breath on his own which he didn't and he went to be with the Lord approx 5:40 on Monday the 13th of August 2007. For Elijah life has only changed not ended. I want to share the journey with you as I have for these many months, the last hours of my son Elijah's life, what I am going to share with you maybe hard for you to read as it is hard for me to write but as I have always share the raw reality highs and lows of the journey I will share it like that still - I will be writing in several posts.








- I slept overnight on Saturday night with Elijah and there was no real change to Elijah's condition. I am sad to say that Elijah did not make any more progress and than my last post. When the medical staff tried removing the breathing tube from Elijah on the ventilator on Sunday Morning he did not respond breathing on his own as he had been doing on the ventilator and so they had to put the tube back in. We learned on Sunday afternoon that some blood tests that had been done had brought back some significant results. at least two areas of liver function we abnormal. In most of us these levels would 100 and post seizure it's not uncommon for the reading to be up to 300, in Elijah's case they were 16000 and 17000 repectively - we knew that Elijah's liver had sustained a significant assault and so the decision was to add plasma, and some other medications to combat this assault, at that stage we really had no idea what other damage Elijah's body had sustained. Julie was due to sleep over and a close friend went into the hospital and I was going to sleep over. Francesca was sleeping over with close friends who live 9 doors up the road. I got a call from Julie to say that our specialist had decided to do a MRI scan. We had been alerted the day before that there was a possibility of Elijah sustaining brain damage, but the reality of this had not yet be realised. I said I would come back into the hospital. I found myself being physically sick and whilst talking to a pastor on the phone I really lost the plot. Because of the sustained length of time that Elijah had been on the ventilator that he along with Julie and I would be transferred to Starship Children's Hospital in Auckland at the other end of the country. Family soon 3 members of the leadership team of the Christian Community that we are part of were on the door step, to cry with me and to plan for the possibility of the the transfer which was almost certain to happen, so we worked through a plan and prayed and then one of the brother drove me to the hospital and another took my car in. I told them today is not the day for dying ! - to be continued - Darren