Some of them are new parents, being pushed into accepting and making choices to increase the longevity of their child’s life, even before grasping the overwhelming phase of parenthood.
Some of them are parents with other children; children who at formative ages are compelled to grow up and grasp the new reality of their life. As siblings, they are not only robbed of the excitement of having a baby brother/ sister, but also must sacrifice time with their parents and their new sibling, who are gone for days sometimes.
These are parents who juggle between taking care of the sibling, the child in the hospital, while trying to maintain a balance, or rather, a new normal.
Some of them are single parents, having to make some of the hardest decisions by themselves for their child.
Some of these families must continue working, at the cost of being next to the child's bedside, to make ends meet.
Some of these families travel from around the country and globe to get world- class treatment from some of finest medical teams.
These are families who experience extreme emotional stress, to say the least.
They live their life by the hour in the ICU because with heart children it’s an unsaid rule, to always be prepared for the unexpected.
Through this entire ordeal however, their children, with all their tubes and IV lines, are silently teaching them of the strength and resilience they never knew they had.
The hardest thing for any parent, is to see their child go through pain. These parents have no option but to do it.
We were one of those families managing a sibling and taking care of another at the hospital. We can never be thankful enough to the Lord for the immense support we had.
