Limitless

Limitless

SO in my blog writing I hit heavily on the scripture at first, today I will start with one powerful scripture, and then share a story of inspiration. The scripture is Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” I wanted to talk with you about being limitless. We as people will put a limit to what we can do before we even try something, why is that? Is it because if we set our expectations to a lower standard anything above that will make us feel good about ourselves? It reminds me of the story of a fish that is kept in a very small aquarium will only grow to the limits of that aquarium, but a fish that is out in the open waters has no boundaries and that fish has the potential to grow in full. Our limits are only what we make them to be.  In my own life I have been inspired by someone that is not even three years old yet, about how to persevere and push yourself beyond what the world thinks you can do. The year was 2008; my lovely wife and I decided to try to have a baby. With relatively no trouble we conceived and became pregnant. Later into the pregnancy we had our first ultrasound, we were so excited for the whole experience, to see the baby, maybe find out what its gender was going to be Etc... While we were there we noticed that the demeanor of the ultrasound tech changed, he became really quiet and focused on trying to find something.  He left us there to wait for what seemed to be an eternity and went to get a doctor, we figured something was wrong. Later the doctor came in and said he would like us to get a second level ultrasound to see if there was anything wrong. This put so much stress and strain on our lives at a time where we wanted to celebrate and be excited about the newness of life we were bringing into the world.  Later through all the tests and procedures that had to be done on my wife we were told our baby was going to have trisomy 21 or what most of us know as Down syndrome. The worst part of all of this was that when meeting with the genetics department and our doctors they all wanted to ensure us that it was still early enough to terminate the pregnancy if we wanted to. It was almost as they felt they were trying to save us the burden of raising this “kind” of child. It was as if they had already put a limit on what my child was going to be able to do. I remember them saying so many things that put a negative spin on what we were in for. After all the tears and fears of what to expect my wife and I knew we would never terminate the pregnancy and I knew we were the BEST people to give this child a “normal” chance on living.  January 27, 2009 Makaiya Grace Crutcher came into this world, and was absolutely beautiful! However, she had some problems and was going to need to spend time in the NICU. Turns out that our daughter had heart impairments; she had two holes in her heart and a faulty valve. This is a common issue with many infants with Down syndrome.  She also had a hard time with eating and we had to supplement food through her NG tube (feeding tube that goes through her nose to stomach). After 16 days we were able to finally take our precious baby home, and couldn’t wait to show her the world! What we did not know is that we would be getting very familiar with Kaiser'e Women and Children's Hospital in Roseville. In our daughters first six months of life it seemed as if we spent two weeks of every month in the hospital.  Makaiya would aspirate on her bottle or because of reflux and would go into heart failure and we would become nurse mommy and daddy, never leaving her side while at the hospital, we even learned how to use their machines and everything. It was pretty intense, and then the biggest challenge came into our lives, heart surgery. We opted to have Makaiya's heart surgery at UC Davis because we wanted family to be close and we really trusted and respected our heart surgeon there. What we weren’t expecting is that we would come seconds away from losing our daughter because of (in my opinion) poor after care by the UC Davis nurses.  Like always I spent every minute, maybe even second by my daughter’s hospital bed. It was hard to see her with wires and tubes all over her, and I felt so helpless when all I wanted to do was to fix everything. One day the nurses and doctors decided it was time to remover her breathing tube and have her start breathing all on her own, even though they spent all night removing plugs (Mucus from her aspirations) from her lungs. The next morning as we were in there I was checking on my daughter holding her hand and I noticed she was turning blue and I told the nurse who shrugged it off at first, then I said NO she is turning blue…. They called a code blue within seconds it felt as if over 100 people were in our room shoving us out. My heart sank and I broke down crying, I thought I was going to lose my baby girl, my wife and I were devastated. We found out that they had to do compression for 15 minutes; we immediately thought that even if she made it she was going to be so brain damaged that she would be a vegetable. My wife was destroyed but we prayed and prayed for God to intervene. We put limits on what she was going to do if she made it but God had bigger plans. They got her stabilized and after an hour had past we were able to go in. she looked so out of it from all the medications her eyes were all over the placed and she looked like the lights were on but no one was home. My wife couldn’t take it so I asked her to go home and spend time with Micah our son.  I didn’t trust the staff enough to leave my daughter for a second so I wasn’t going anywhere. The next day Makaiya was in a better state she was a bit more alert and the staff there couldn’t believe she was the same girl that hours earlier they were giving compressions to. She was our miracle, already breaking down limits of what people thought of her, she was not only a survivor but a thriver. Makaiya was going to be ok and not just that she would amaze us daily, with her fun personality to her vocabulary. Just when we would think she may never get something she does and goes even further. Makaiya is been not using her feeding tube for almost half a year, she was hundreds of words she knows and she working harder and harder on walking. She throws balls across the house while playing catch and she loves being around other kids especially in Sunday bible school. This girl is incredible and she will soon be in the school system where she can once again take what someone tells her she won’t be able to do and blow their mind with her perseverance and tenacity.  What can we say we push her like she is a “regular” kid and she is, no matter, her diagnosis or title our daughter would be special, not in a bad way in a way that all amazing people are. She has the twinkle in her eye the face that says meet me and I’ll turn any bad day around. I wanted to share this story with you to think about your life, put it in perspective with the many gifts and blessing you are given, how are you using them. Are you putting all your effort into things that are bringing you down or that are uplifting? God has great plans for you if you rely on his wisdom and guidance he will remove the limits we set on ourselves and make our potential limitless.

Here is a video of my daughters first year of life and another video of her fun personality now at age 2 ½ please enjoy and be inspired like we are every day.