Joel's Last Day

After Joel moved his foot on Monday night, he remained stable through the night. I slept until 4:00 AM and at that point his temperature was 37.2, his heartbeat was 130, and his blood pressure was 76/31. His blood oxygen level was 91%.
Tuesday was Hosanna’s birthday and Cindy had already planned to have her birthday party at the hospital so that Joel could be there.
Around 7:00 AM, Joel’s oxygen level dropped significantly and without warning. He did not seem to have much moisture that needed to be suctioned out of his tube. After working with him he seemed to come up on his counts.
Around 9:30 AM we re-inserted his port in preparation for him to go home. Shortly after that his counts dropped again, including his heartbeat, and it began to concern me. I called Cindy to encourage her to come to the hospital as soon as possible. By noon the ventilator was not giving Joel enough oxygen, so we began to manually ‘bag’ him to raise his levels.
We were encouraging him to wait on his mom and she arrived around 1:00 PM with some of the children. My mother was here and she brought the rest of the children around 2:00 PM.
Joel was still struggling and we went ahead and had Hosanna’s birthday party with Joel around 2:30 PM. We also decided to try to take Joel home in the ambulance so that he could be at home on his little farm. The hospital tried to arrange the trip home and told us that the ambulance could be there around 6:00 PM.
Joel continued to struggle and he would not do well on the ventilator. We continued to ‘bag’ him and turned up his oxygen level. He came back on his counts, but after 3:00 PM they began to gradually fall.
By the next hour his heart rate was in the 90’s and falling. We so desired and sought to trust the Lord to raise him up. It was an excruciating time for our family and the dear friends that were there. At 4:30 PM, after a long and arduous struggle, Joel breathed his last and his little heart stopped beating. He departed from this life, safe in the arms of Jesus.
Cindy held the precious body of her little child for some time and arrangements were made to have Joel’s little body taken to the funeral home in Guthrie. We all then left the hospital where we had fought so long, prayed so hard, and shed so many tears for our precious Joel.
These last few days have been difficult. Joel was so dear to our family. Our hearts are broken. Two days ago I turned to Psalm 147 and read these words:

“He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.”

Please pray that it may be so.