Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Prayers for Baby Joel

This is an update on Joel taken directly from an email sent by Stephanie's twin sister Lyndsey.


Prayer Warriors…

Please pray for my nephew, baby Joel Winningham. As many of you know, he’s really been struggling during these first few weeks of his life. He’s been diagnosed with a congenital heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot. It means that there are 4 things wrong with his heart… mainly, it requires a pretty intense surgery to repair it. Unfortunately, because Joel is so small (prematurity doesn’t help) – he isn’t big or strong enough to withstand this kind of surgery at this point. He has been going back and forth between doing well and not. Sometime his sats (oxygen saturation level in his blood) are stable, and other times they drop dangerously low. Yesterday wasn’t a good day for Joel – so today (sometime between 11am-4pm) the doctors at Legacy Emmanuel Hospital in Portland are going to do a temporary procedure – to go in thru the vein in his little leg, and up to his heart – to place a shunt between the aorta and the pulmonary artery. This should help to provide adequate blood flow to his lungs – and help him get more oxygen flowing thru his blood stream. As with all procedures involving the heart, there are risks. (Worst case scenario – the procedure could loosen a blood clot, that could find it’s way to his brain and cause a stroke.) But we’re praying for best case scenario – that it would be successful, that Joel would become stable again and that he would be able to go home with Steph and Toby to grow and await his complete repair surgery in a few months.

It is so good to know that our Heavenly Father’s plan is more incredible that we could ever imagine – please pray that Steph and Toby would find complete comfort and peace in His loving arms. He is our ultimate healer, since He is our creator – pray that he will guide the doctor’s hands and give them wisdom as they seek to help little Joel.

Thank you so much for your prayers, Christ is our ultimate source of strength & healing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't know how baby Joel is doing right now, but this heart defect is one that I had...so Lord willing he can look forward to a wonderfully healthy life!