The crisp, breezy days of November were just beginning to signal mid-autumn in the San Francisco Bay area.  I was working as a courier for Bank of America and was finished with my day's driving.  As I pulled into my driveway and opened the car door I heard the jangling of the phone inside the house.  Rushing to unlock the door, I hurried inside and answered the phone, surprised to hear the voice of my long-time friend who lived in Arkansas with her husband and two children..  We usually only called each other at "prime time" when rates were lower.

"Helen!  What are you doing calling me in the middle of the day?"  Her voice sounded strained.  "Jan, our Tee is really sick and in the hospital.  He started having seizures yesterday and we took him into the emergency room.  They can't stop the seizures."

Tee had just turned two in July.  A few weeks before Helen called, I'd received a tape from Tee and his sister, Joni, who had just turned three.  On the tape they both sang songs they were learning in Sunday School and chattered about what they were going to be for Halloween.  Things seemed to going well for Helen and her family, so it was a shock to hear this disturbing news about little Tee. 

The next day Helen called to tell me that Tee had been transferred to a larger hospital in Rogers where there was better equipment and a pediatrician.  The seizures were still not under control, but he wanted to talk to me on the phone for just a few minutes.

"Hi, Aunt Janny."  His voice sounded so tiny and frail.      

"Hi, Tee Baby.  How's my boy doing?"

"I real sick," he almost whispered. 

Tears began welling up in my eyes and I tried to talk over the lump in my throat.  "The doctors are going to help you get better, sweetie.  I love you very, very much." 

"I love you, too…" his voice trailed off.

Helen got back on the line.  "Jan, I have to go.  He's seizuring again!"  Right after that, Tee stopped breathing and had to be resusitated twice.  He was moved to the intensive care unit and had not regained consciousness after he talked to me on the phone.  Those were the last words he was ever able to speak.  He slipped into a coma and the doctor told Helen that Tee's condition was very critical and possibly fatal.

I made arrangements to take off work and booked a flight to Arkansas.  When I arrived at the small hospital I went to the Pediatric ICU to see Tee.  He had IVs and various tubes running from all parts of his seizuring body to medical monitors and machinery.  His eyes twitched, but they didn't open.  His body trembled rhythmically in seizure activity.  First the left side of his face would twitch, then his left arm and hand, then his left leg and foot, then his right side would become affected.  The procedure would grimly repeat itself as if some ghastly remote control had taken over Tee's functions.  As I stroked his soft hair, I continually talked to him.  He seemed so far, far away, but I felt like maybe he could hear us or feel us touching him and loving him.  We certainly wanted him to know that one of us was always there, praying desperately that he would just wake up and be all right.

The hospital staff was kind enough to let us use an empty room to take turns sleeping in over the next couple of days.  One nurse even came in as she was going home after her shift and took our bag of dirty laundry home with her, bringing it all back clean and folded the next day!  The pediatrician was there day and night, trying everything he and his colleagues could think of to help Tee.  Finally, after two days the decision was made to transport Tee to Little Rock Children's Hospital where state of the art technology could be accessed.

Children's Hospital was much larger,  considerably more formal, and seemed somewhat formidable after spending the previous days in the smaller, more intimate hospital at Rogers.  Fortunately, we were able to stay at the Ronald McDonald House, an apartment-like complex used to temporarily house families of critically ill children.  For a very nominal fee we had a place to sleep and eat and take brief respites from the hospital.  This was especially helpful for little 3 year old Joni, who really needed a break from the stressful atmosphere.  I spent a lot of the time taking care of her, playing games and coloring with her, anything to distract her from worrying about her baby brother.

Now Tee had a whole team of specialists working on his case.  They tested him for everything imaginable: toxic poisoning, infections from ticks, meningitis.  The tests never yielded any new information, and Tee remained unconscious, his condition growing worse every day.  The electroencephalogram (EEG) results showed that he had a significant amount of brain damage, but the doctors still couldn't tell exactly to what degree or what was causing it.

After Tee had been in Little Rock for about 5 days, the results of all the batteries of tests were in.  There was no known cause for his illness. As we boarded the elevator later that day for the umpteenth time to go up to ICU, one of Tee's doctors, a young intern, followed us.

"Oh, I've been looking for you," she said curtly, clipboard in hand, stethoscope around her neck, "We have finished consultation about your son."  She glanced down at her notes.  "He's had a massive assault to the brain, probably from encephalitis, a brain infection.  There is extensive, irreversible brain damage."

There was dead silence for a brief moment, then, realizing that Helen was still trying to process this bombshell that had been so tactlessly dropped upon us, I asked, "So, what exactly does that mean?  What do we do next?"

Without even looking at any of us, she said detachedly, "His entire brain has been assualted.  He will never walk or talk again.  He's spastic quadriplegic, probably blind and deaf.  He probably won't live longer than a few months.  We'll put a feeding tube in because he will never be able to eat by mouth.  You may want to consider putting him in a facility where he can receive constant medical care."  The elevator doors opened and she stepped out without another word.  We stood there silently shocked, bewildered, and afraid to think about what was ahead.

Fortunately, there were other doctors and nurses who were more compassionate and informative, and who gathered around Tee's bed in what seemed to be a nonstop vigil.  Often, during a harrowing time, God places special people in just the right place at the right time.  Tee had a nurse who was absolutely that person.  I was spending the night in the hospital the night after we'd received the horrible news from the witless intern.  I knew Helen, John, and Joni needed some family time and I also just really wanted to be near Tee.  The rules in ICU were that you could only visit for five minutes each hour.  I sat in the waiting room, watching the clock, waiting for the time to come that I could spend with our precious angel boy.  At midnight I went in, noticing the somewhat more relaxed atmosphere of the late night shift.  I stood by Tee's bed, telling him how much we all loved him, stroking his hair, kissing his soft, chubby cheek.  The monitors that showed his vital signs didn't look good--the constant seizures caused his heart rate and respirations to remain very erratic.

From behind me came a male voice with a lovely Australian accent.  "So, you must be his Mum, eh?  He's quite a boy, isn't he?"

I quickly brushed the tears away.  "Yeah, he's really a little fighter, but he's having a tough time."  I turned to look at the speaker.  He was a young nurse with an armload of towels, washcloths, and other hospital paraphernalia.  He put the things down at the foot of Tee's bed and stood by me, taking one of Tee's tiny hands in his large one.

"How long's he been in ICU?" he asked gently.

"About a week."

"I'll bet he'd really like to be held.  You want to hold him for awhile?"

My heart melted.  Because of all the tubes and devices Tee had been connected to, we hadn't been able to even cuddle him, much less hold him.  The policy here so far had almost been hands off.  "I'd love to hold him, but how can I with all this stuff….."

The nurse pulled the curtains around so that none of the other staff could see us.  "Well, I have to give him a bed bath and change his sheets, and it'll be a lot easier if you help me by holding him, so let's do it!"

He brought in a rocking chair, and by some miraculous contortions he managed to lift Tee, tubes, wires (including the 15 EEG wires taped to Tee's scalp), catheter, and all and place him in my lap.  I never knew holding a child could feel so good.  Tee's tight, stiff muscles began to relax as I sang quietly to him.  The twitching slowed to just slight movements, and his heart and respiratory monitors began beeping rhythmically rather than the erratic stop-start stacatto they had been playing.  The nurse disappeared for about a half hour and just let me spend some blissful, precious time that helped to heal the jagged edges of the past week for both Tee and I.  When the nurse came back, he let me bathe Tee and he assisted with getting the water and handing me the towels.  He, too, was amazed at the change in Tee's vitals and in his more relaxed muscle tone.

I never knew the nurse's name, and we didn't see him again at the hospital.  Wherever you are, though, God bless you!

A week later, Tee opened his eyes.  We were so excited at this small, hopeful change.  But that was all that changed.  It was difficult to tell if he could see or not, because his eyes wouldn't track anything and he didn't appear to look at us.  He did not move at all, except for the seizuring.  The doctors said he was still in a semi-comatose state.  They set up a training session to teach Helen how to feed him through the feeding tube they'd placed in his stomach, and how to take care of him once he was able to leave the hospital.  A few days later I had to return to California, heartsick and sadder than I'd ever been, hating having to leave my friend with so much on her plate.

A couple of weeks later, Tee was sent home with an assortment of seizure medications and referrals for various types of therapy.  During the next few months, I talked to Helen often.  Every time we talked I could hear Tee crying a high-pitched, distressed cry in the background.  She said he cried almost all the time and he seemed bewildered by all that had happened to his body.  My friend sounded so exhausted that I knew she couldn't keep up this pace, plus there was little Joni to take care of.  Helen's husband coped with the stress by staying away from home as much as possible.

In May, I quit my job and moved to Arkansas to help take care of Tee for awhile, planning to stay a couple of months.  I was alarmed when I saw him.  The once chubby, cherub-like little toddler was now thin and pale.  His lips were pulled back from his teeth and his limbs were all very stiff and tight, the result of the spasticity of the cerebral palsy.  But I looked into those big, brown eyes and saw such innocence and such beauty!  Something told me that he could understand more than most people were giving him credit for.

I ended up staying in Arkansas for two years.   Each day as I worked and played with him, I realized what a wonderful, special boy Tee was.  He began to smile, and that smile lit up my world!  A strong bond grew between us and soon he was spending as much time with me as with his parents.  I will be eternally grateful to them for sharing him with me.  I think he knew that I believed in him, so he tried very hard to meet the challenges we put before him.  He didn't talk, but I could coax him into making sweet cooing sounds.  He became able to eat pureed foods by mouth without choking at every meal.