First, let me say that it is never boring at our house. Check out our last six months of just medical stuff:

  • Jennifer: Kidney stone and two surgeries to remove cysts from her ovary
  • Gabriel: Just getting over the flu.
  • Adam: Recently recovered from Strep throat and almost broke his nose doing a face plant in the cul-de-sac.
  • Me: Two cases of kidney stones (one removed via lithotripsy) and a broken elbow.

And then we have Noah…

Noah Can’t Catch

We were playing catch as Noah and Adam prepare for baseball tryouts this Friday. Jen was on the back deck finishing up steaks on the grill and life seemed pretty normal…

Noah kept begging, “Dad, bring the heat!” Each time, I reminded him that I was throwing with an arm still smarting a little from our last escapade. I throw a lob to him to simulate a pop fly. He runs under it only to have the ball barely miss his glove and hit him in the face.

Noah hit the ground flailing like a fish out of water screaming. When I got to him, it looked like a piece of his glasses had been lodged in his skull. My heart was immediately in my throat. I yelled to Jen and Matthew to call 911. When I found his glasses in the grass and realized they were OK, I had them call off 911. But, I could feel something hard like bone fragments that I could move on the outside of his eye socket. I immediately held his right eye closed and coached him to breathe so he could calm down. We have had to do this a lot with Noah in his life, because he is a little daredevil. So, he was able to listen to my breathing and calm down.

After we taped his eye shut, I had him sit up. Before standing, I knelt next to him and prayed that there would be no permanent damage to his eye. This was not easy, because I was afraid he had done some really bad damage. But, I took my thoughts captive and prayed. I prayed know that I could feel bone moving where solid skull should be. I prayed, knowing that without God, we were in trouble.

So, we stood up and headed for the ER. When we arrived, they classified him as a level 2 urgent patient. That meant the only people getting in before him had to have a heart attack or squirting blood out of their carotid artery.  I sent one text to only four people (thanks Steve Jobs for group texting) to pray. I knew the word would get out.

In the exam room, they shined a light in his eyes. The left dilated. The right did not. So, they did a CT scan. There are not many things more scary than following your ten year old child to CT only to be told to wait outside. But, I was able to see a reflected image of Noah laying on the table through the control room. They lined him up on the table and told him to lie still. Then they left him on in the room, by himself for five minutes while they got ready… They left him by himself, lying still… alone. He didn’t move. Why? Because we had prayed one time 3 hours earlier sitting in the yard.

When the report came back, there were no broken bones! I felt something in the yard. Jennifer saw it. But, nothing was there. So, we came into the emergency room moving ahead of the line, with a “fractured” skull and an eye that wouldn’t dilate.  We left several hours later with only the medical equivalent of Super Glue applied to his head.

What was Noah’s response? I guess all that praying worked. Simple but true.

I believe God healed him.

Here is what Noah looked like just 12 hours after lying in the grass bleeding, breathing and getting healed.

Noah Day After

Now, we just have to teach him to catch the ball.