Help Us Help Gus

My son, Gus, had a stroke on Thursday, May 5 and then again early on Tuesday morning, May 10th. We confirmed this later in the day, at the McLane Children’s hospital where he had an MRI done, and then was care-flighted to Cooks Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth, where we have been for the last 10 days.

There is an artery constriction in his brain caused by an infection (we still don’t know what kind), resulting in what’s called FCA (Focal Cerebral Arteriopathy). After several days in the pediatric ICU, where he underwent 3 more MRIs, several doses of heavy medications, injections, and round the clock monitoring, we were given the good news that he will survive. Over the last couple of days he has started seeing a therapy team to work on gross motor skills, fine motor skills, speech and eating, all to help him regain the use of his right limbs. There is a long road of therapy, which will help Gus to re-learn how to use the right side of his body and hopefully be able to have a mostly normal and functioning life.

We are a praying and Christ-following family and have felt no greater comfort than knowing our friends and family, even total strangers, have been lifting us up. I am very thankful to have a network of friends and family that have really stepped up to help with our other children as we focus our attention to Gus. We will continue to have needs as we go forward with rehabilitation for him. A lot of people have asked how they can help, and the really honest answer is we will need help to offset the medical expenses. There will be many road trips up to Fort Worth to see his stroke specialists (6 in total), he will need medications, equipment for rehab, and probably a lot of other things we haven’t even thought of yet. Please, please don’t feel obligated to help in this way if you are not comfortable. We are simply thankful that Gus is alive and will eventually go home with us.