48 hours...

48 hours ago we were walking into Loma Linda Children's Hospital to hand off Reagan for her heart surgery...



The next day (yesterday) while Mama was at the hospital with Reagan...

Then later in the day...

Reagan is safely back at home...

48 hours later... I'm off to work!  See ya!

Papa

That's how it is...

This post is a direct response to a comment made on Patti's Facebook post about Carrington.  Michelle Young wrote...  "Wow i will pray how can they get away with this its so barbaric. Dont they have laws in these countries to protect these beautiful gifts from god"


Michelle, you live in a country where we still have a higher value on life than many other places.  From what I can glean from Carrington's story so far, there are probably no law's that were violated.  If Carrington has a medical condition (reflux) that made her unable to hold down food, then she will slowly starve to death without medical intervention.  It is an unfortunate truth that in the very countries that these DS children are, (and this is not limited to DS children) they are throw away children.  They have no value to society.  The money will not be spent on them.  They will not get medical care that they need because there is not enough money for this.  Welcome to socialized medicine.  Some people get treatment, some do not.   DS children do not have the "value" that "productive" members of society do.  Therefore they are put into orphanages, and when they are old enough, they are sent to the mental institute.  They will live as long as thier body will sustain life, then they will die.  I'm sure that if Carrington was not rescued at this last minute, her death would have been attributed to "natural causes", not neglect.


This is why it is so critically important to rescue these children.  I was going to list names at this point, but there are just too many to list.  And they are all important.  And I wouldn't want to leave any out. 


There is so much more that can be said on this subject, and I will be saying more.  But at this moment I will leave it here.  I am praising God that Carrington is now in this country where men fall to their knees in tears at the sight of her.  


And where my own granddaughter Reagan gets the love and caring that she deserves.  Where, at this very moment, as I am typing this, Dr. Bailey is repairing her heart.  At a hospital where children from all over the world are sent because they have value here.


God is good.


Papa

Full Circle... Reprise

If you haven't read "Full Circle..." yet, read it before reading this post...

October, 1984...  Shauna was just 4 years old...

I was driving a truck delivering medical gases to Loma Linda Hospital.  Driving north into the campus, as I came over the railroad over crossing, there in front of me was the largest collection of media I had ever personally seen in one spot.  I was not surprised to see them there, only surprised at their number.  Why were they there?  They were following the story of "Baby Fae",  the baby who received the transplant of the baboon heart.  This was the result of ground breaking research by Dr. Leonard Bailey.  Research he pursued because, early in his career, he got tired of having parents told, "Your baby isn't going to live."

One year later Dr. Bailey transplanted a human heart into four day old "Baby Moses", who is alive and well...

Twenty-six and a half years later...  our granddaughter needs open heart surgery.  And who is her surgeon?  Yes, the very same Dr. Bailey...

Dr. Leonard Bailey holding Reagan

Back when I was right there every day delivering to the hospital, walking the halls in research, talking with these medical pioneers about what they were studying and doing, and following "Baby Fae's" story up close and personal, did it ever occur to me that one of my family would ever be a patient of Dr. Bailey??  Not in my wildest dreams....  but God knew!!  And now I am returning there again...  in just two weeks.  When Reagan gets her heart fixed by the hands of a man whose life-time passion has been to save the lives of babies born with congenital heart defects.

And another story comes full circle...

Papa