Latest / Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment) / SnapShot: When Suffering Connects Lives Across Decades

Transcript

SnapShot: When Suffering Connects Lives Across Decades · Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to a murders to music snapshot.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Ten minutes or less where I'm gonna entertain you, tell you something.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: TL you something?
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure if it sounded southern just now.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, y'all stick around.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have some fun.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna tell you a fun story.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: So if you remember back episode number three, it's called Battling the Odds, A Son's Fight for Life and Future.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: And in that episode, I interviewed my son Justice.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Justice was born in 2005.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the whole point in this episode is to remind us how God has this weird way of connecting all of the dots in our lives and bringing things full circle.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: You see, in 2005, and this is outlined on episode number three, but in 2005, my son Justice was born with an internal birth defect.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: He was given a 0% chance of survival at birth.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: He we were told that he would live 30 minutes and die.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: We were in a hospital in Alaska that did not have a lot of medical care or technology, and the idea of maybe keeping him alive was a very slim risk in Alaska.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: So at some point during this initial few minutes of life, uh, first hour or two of life, the doctor saw something promising on my son's pulse oximeter, and his pulse ox showed that he had some oxygen exchange going on inside of his lungs.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, long story short, my son was born with what's called the congenital diaphragmatic hernia, which means that at some point in utero, his diaphragm got a hole in it and his guts went up into the heart and lung upper cavity of the chest.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And when that happens, the heart and lungs will not push the guts out of the way to make room to develop.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: They just simply won't develop or will underdevelop.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it really depends on where this happens in utero as to how severe this is.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: For example, if it happens early in utero, then the heart and lungs don't develop at all because there's something occupying their space.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: If it happens late in utero, then the lungs are compressed, compromised, and the heart may be displaced, which is also still life-threatening.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And in our case, it happened late in utero for my son.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: So when he was born, he again was given a 0% chance of survival because he had no oxygen exchange in his lungs.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: But within a few hours of life, the doctor saw the number spike and he thought, you know what, maybe there's a chance we're gonna we're gonna metavac this kid from Anchorage, Alaska, all the way to Portland, Oregon, to the Emmanuel Hospital, where they have a special treatment called ECMO.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: ECMO is a heart and lung bypass machine that does about 80% of the work of your heart and lungs.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's not life support, but it will allow your body to rest, to heal, recover, and then they've taken you off ECMO.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: If your body's up to it, you live, and if not, you die.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: The condition my son has is very, very unique.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one at that time 20,000 kids were born with it, or something like that.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we get Medivact down to the Emmanuel Hospital in Portland, Oregon.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: At the Emanuel Hospital, there is a room called the Ladybug Room.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: The Ladybug Room is a room that is about 65, 70 feet wide by about 30 feet deep.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Each wall has one bed on it, and that is one child.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: So there's three children in the ladybug room, this ginormous room.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: The reason the walls are so big is because these kids are the sickest kids at this neonatal intensive care unit that is world-renowned.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: People come from all over the world, and if you've made it to the ladybug room, you are the sickest kids in that hospital.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my son spent six, eight weeks in that room, whatever the number was, a long time, living minute by minute.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he's on a wall of machines that's 30 feet long by 10 feet tall, and the this is what's keeping him alive.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's on drugs that are costing$200 a minute for him to take.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: That is how sick my son was.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in another ladybug bed was a little girl named Addison.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And Addison was there with her parents, Lee and Mary Ann.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And she had the exact same condition that my son has.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: So over that three-month period that we were there, we got to know Lee and Mary Ann very well.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we got to spend Easter with them and spend time with them.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it was great to have somebody else there alongside you because our children both survived this condition.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: However, we are watching kids die almost daily, at least weekly.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: There are children that are having these conditions that are dying around us, literally in the same rooms as us.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we spend this time with Lee and Marianne.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Three months come by, and we get to go home with our child.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: They get to go home with theirs.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then over the next 15, 18 years, we really don't see them.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: We don't connect with them.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Occasionally early on, there were a couple phone calls.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh, you know, we slowly slip away from each other.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're both aware of each other's circumstances and situations, but there's a huge distance between us.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Then we move back into the Pacific Northwest.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: We're here for about 15 years, and uh, we are going to our church, and all of a sudden our church expands.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And when our church expands, it means that there's another church in the area that's struggling.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: So our church is going to help them.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: We bring them up underneath our name and we help support that church and help with pastoral ministries and that type of stuff.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my wife is part of the youth administration or the youth executive team at our church, and she is in charge of planning the youth summer camps.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: So she plans the youth summer camps, but now we have all these other churches involved, so there's more kids.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Long story short, she goes off to church summer camp, and guess who's there?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Addie, Addison.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: At that summer camp, it's the same year that my son Justice, who is an EMT with AMR, he is volunteering his EMT services at the camp.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: So now these two kids who were struggling for life together have now been reunited.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a day we didn't know if they would take another breath.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that is awesome.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: So these two kids are back together 20 years later.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: I go and visit one of these churches because uh I had something going on.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't go to my own church, so I just I I attend one of these other churches, and there's Lee.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Lee is security for the church.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: We hang out, we talk, we reconnect, and it was so amazing to see how it started on a deathbed in 2005 has been reconnected and resurrected in 2025.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's a pretty amazing thing, full circle.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're lost, we're scared, we're alone in Alaska, thinking our son is dying.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: God had a different plan, transports us to Portland, Oregon, where we live for three months in a hospital, praying day by day that our child lives, meet another family, come alongside, share Easter together with, only to be separated by 20 years, come back together, volunteering at the same church camp and attending live together.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: That is amazing.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing how it comes full circle, and it's pretty freaking awesome.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, that is a murders to music snapshot.