We're Running Out of Time

The Easton Team March of Dimes Walk America is just 10 days away!! We reached our inital fundraising goal and have recently moved it up. Please consider donating to this amazing cause that helped save our little guy's life. If you're not wanting to re-live this experience just now don't read on...

The lyrics on this page are from a well-known song in the preemie community. It is by Mark Shultz, a Christian singer.

Just 15 months ago Easton was in Children's Hospital. He was born at 33 weeks and weighed just 3 pounds 14 ounces. At birth he seemed fine, just needed some time to grow and learn to eat. It was my health they were worrying about to start with. The next day, our world turned upside down. What had been the happiest days of our lives quickly turned into the worst. Easton was having more and more trouble breathing. His oxygen saturations were dropping as he worked harder and harder to breathe. Before long he needed help and the nurses worked to get him better. From my recovery room I heard his doctor paged "STAT to the NICU". Easton needed to be intubated and they were having a hard time, for some reason his little vocal cords were inflamed. They were having to give him artificial breaths and chest compressions, at one point there were 8 people in his room "working" to resuscitate him. Once they got the tube in to help him breathe they gave him a dose of medication called Surfactant. Surfactant research was funded by the March Of Dimes. Easton desperately needed this medicine as x-rays basically showed the little sacs in his lungs were sticking shut, collapsed on themselves. The Surfactant lubricated those sacs so they could open back up and oxygen could get in again. This is a very basic explanation as our little guy also developed a collapsed lung due to a hole that wasn't there at birth. They had to cut a hole in his chest and put a tube in so his lung would inflate again. Anyway, after they got him stabalized Jason and I said our goodbyes to him and the Flight for Life ground transport team took him away to Children's Hospital. He still didn't have a name yet. It wasn't until after he left that we decided on "Easton". He ended up being on a ventilator with the chest tube in place for 4 days. It was 5 days before I even got to hold my son for the first time.

Since that awful day Easton only got better, we had no setbacks to speak of after that. God has answered prayer after prayer and we do feel truly blessed by Him. We are of course grateful to the talented staff at both the hospitals we spent time in (29 nights!) and to MOD research. That is why we'll be walking on April 29th, and politely ask you support us in any way you can. Thanks for reading...next time it won't be so "heavy"! Click here to go to our Walk America site.