Beckett's Story

    

     Jon Beckett was born on Sept. 24, 2009. He was a full term, healthy baby boy. On April 5^th, 2010 Beckett was at his babysitter's house, she laid him down for a nap on her bed instead of in his crib and when she went back in 30 minutes later his head was wedged between the mattress and headboard. So for a period of time, up to 30 min, he had little to no oxygen.
     He was taken by ambulance to Stonecrest Hospital. Once we arrived there it was obvious that things were worse than we thought. The ER Dr said his brain was suffering from the lack of oxygen & they wanted to send him to Vanderbilt. When we got to Vandy he was having seizures and his brain was swelling so he was sent to the Critical Care Unit. We talked to the head Dr in the CCU, the news did not get any better, in fact it got worse, she told us that Beckett's brain had suffered a “devasting injury and his condition was not compatible with life” she told us that all they could do was put him in a drug induced coma to help his brain rest but that she was sure he wouldn't make it through the night.

     But after a week in a coma & on life support he was still alive. He had made it to the next step and the Drs all seemed surprised, they had a meeting with us to discuss “our options”. They told us if he did make it out of the coma he would never be the same and would almost certainly have severe cerebral palsy, require a feeding tube & probably only live for a short while. After talking and praying together we decided to let the doctors bring Beckett out of the drug induced coma and just turn everything over to God.

     Surprising them all again, Beckett slowly started to wake up. After a few very rough days & a couple close calls, Beckett was off the ventilator and out of the CCU. He then passed a swallow study which meant he could eat on his own & avoid a feeding tube, yet another miracle. And finally after 23 days at Vanderbilt we were all able to go home.

     Despite all the miracles that occurred while Beckett was in the hospital, when we brought him home there was no trace of the 6 month old we once knew. He had absolutely no muscle tone and was like a limp noodle. He couldn't roll over, sit up or even hold his own head up, it was also obvious that he had quite a bit of vision loss. 

     The therapists at Vanderbilt had put us in touch with Special Kids in Murfreesboro since they knew he would need lots of therapy. He immediately started Physical, Occupational & Speech therapy there. Thankfully, Special Kids also has a Skilled Nursing program where children like Beckett can stay during the day while their parents work. The nursing program is staffed by trained nurses who have experience caring for medically fragile children. Typical daycares would never have accepted Beckett and we wouldn’t have felt comfortable leaving him at one anyway. Plus the amount of therapy Beckett required meant one of us would have had to quit work just to be able to take him back and forth to Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy, Feeding Therapy, etc. But with Beckett staying at Special Kids he sees his therapists each day and receives amazing care in a loving, Christian setting without us having to worry about him. I don’t know where we would be without them. We pray that Beckett continues to make progress & we want to give him the best therapy & treatments possible to help him. We are so blessed by the support from our wonderful family & friends, and also from kind hearted strangers who may have never even met Beckett but still want to help.  



These pics are from his time in the hospital. These are actually pretty good. He looked much, much worse in CCU with all the swelling & breathing tube & wires & whatnot.