My husband and I have eight children, three biological and 5 adopted. Four of our adopted children are siblings, but our fifth adopted child came to us when we were medical foster parents. He was sick from the day we brought him home, and came to us with a large hematoma on his head about the size of a child’s fist, caused by getting stuck in his mother’s birth canal. No doctors or nurses attended his birth and his survival was a miracle in itself. His Apgar scores were 0 and 5, and he had been a blue baby due to lack of oxygen. His name was Joshua, and I fell in love with him the moment I saw him. I was sure God had a special plan for this baby, and I pictured him becoming a missionary or pastor. He was a plump little boy and weighed ten pounds, six ounces.
Joshua didn’t stay chubby. He was constantly spitting up, and his breathing was always labored. This was later diagnosed as Tracheomalacia, which caused weak throat cartilage that kept collapsing as he tried to breathe and eat. Nutrition soon became a problem and we began to battle starvation. On top of his nutritional problems, Joshua began getting several infections. He had a large urinary tract leak, and internal infections and ear infections became commonplace. His blood work started to show other abnormalities, which quite frankly, just confused the doctors. During the first two years of his life, Joshua was hospitalized eight times.
As Joshua grew, it was hard to gauge his mental development because of all of his illnesses. He made no sounds at all besides his labored breathing for the entire first year of his life. After his first birthday, God healed Joshua’s urinary tract and trachea problems without surgery, but he continued to battle various infections. We had occupational, speech and physical therapists come in to work with Joshua, but he hit very few developmental milestones and tested far below normal on every scale. Still, I was convinced that once we had a handle on his medical issues, his developmental issues would resolve themselves. After all, I knew that God had special plans for my son, and I still had mission work and other dreams in mind when I considered Joshua’s future.
At four years of age the immunologists at Shands Children’s Hospital diagnosed Joshua with Leukocyte Adhesion Deficiency, a rare blood disease that causes the white blood cells to not work correctly. A side effect is having gingivitis and other tooth problems, and all of Joshua’s baby teeth had to be pulled because infection had gotten into the teeth and was eroding the bones in his jaw. Then in August of 2003, we took Joshua down to Shands for his regularly scheduled annual appointment with the immunologists with an eye infection that had been resistant to all of the antibiotics we had tried. I expected them to give us a stronger anti-biotic and send us home, but Joshua ended up being hospitalized for several days as they discovered a bone infection in the bones behind his sinuses. Blood work also showed that the leucocytes were not the problem with his white blood cells but rather another molecule named the granulocyte. There is no name for this disease because tests have only recently been developed to find this particular defect. The bone infection was so serious that it required IV antibiotics, and Joshua’s veins couldn’t support that without a PIC line, which was just torture for a child with the developmental age of twelve months. After two months of treatment, the bone scans were redone and showed virtually no change. Because of the PIC line problems, a port was surgically inserted into his chest, and tests were done to try to identify the type of bacteria causing the bone infection, all to no avail. Despite these challenges, his condition did slowly improve, and we eventually were able to take him home again.
In October of 2003, I got a call from the physician’s assistant at Shands. She told me that Joshua’s recent blood work showed that he had virtually no white blood cells, and that he should stay home from school until we could get the number increased. When I told her that Joshua had a stomach virus with a temperature of 103 degrees, she told me to take him to a doctor immediately. He was probably septic, which meant his blood was infected, and that he would probably die within twenty-four hours. She also told me that even if it was just a stomach virus, that alone could kill him because his body simply did not have the defenses in his blood to fight anything off. We rushed Joshua to the emergency room and by this time, Joshua’s fever had gone up to 105, and he was pale and listless. I called my church and asked people to start praying for my precious son that was fighting for his life. Only later did I discover the extent of the prayer that was going on for my son. The word was passed to several home fellowships that were meeting, relatives in other states and their congregations, and even unsaved people at a baby shower lifted up prayers for my son’s life.
The prayers worked. At about seven o’clock that evening, Joshua sat up, his fever broke and his color returned. Blood tests showed that the number of white blood cells in his body had doubled, which was just enough to fight off the problems. The doctors were amazed and couldn’t believe it, but I knew exactly what had happened. God had heard our prayers and saved my son. Instead of watching my son slip into a coma and die, we were able to return home at about one that morning.
Joshua still has his immune system disease. He is unable to talk, severely developmentally delayed and will never be the missionary or pastor that I envisioned when we welcomed him into our home. But God has used our son in a mighty way to touch the lives of hundreds of people. Every time he has a doctor’s appointment or is hospitalized, my husband and I get the opportunity to witness to the hospital staff and roommates about adoption and the wonderful things that God is doing with Joshua’s life. Many people at our church and in our family have been touched by Joshua’s struggles, and seeds of faith have been planted in hearts across Florida. I don’t know how long Joshua will be alive to bless us, but God has used this precious little boy to teach me to give the difficult situations to the Lord instead of trying to handle everything in my own power. I have also learned that there is nothing too big for God to handle, and that there is no detail too small for Him to care about. Most importantly, God has showed me that He doesn’t always remove the difficulties from our lives, even though He can, but He will always be with us through the difficulties. Joshua’s life has strengthened my faith, and that is Joshua’s most precious gift.
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