Return of the Travelers

Greetings from a tired, globe-trotting father! It is now 11:00 at night and thanks to jet lag, I am wide awake! Oh well, I have acquired a precious 6 hours of sleep over the last 52 hours so if this seems a little dis-jointed, you’ll know why! :-) We arrived home here at 1:30am this morning.

I want to thank all of you for your prayers! I felt so buoyed up these last two and a half weeks that I could hardly believe it! We praise God that the surgery was a success and we were very grateful we went. The doctors and staff were beyond my expectations and we were very blessed with their knowledge, skill and tender loving care! As far as the surgery, it took about a little over an hour from the time they put him under till I could go to the recovery room to see him wake up. I was so thankful that I was allowed into the operating room and hold my son as he “fell asleep.” I was the last face he saw and the first when he awoke and that meant a lot to me. I tell you, it goes thru the heart of a father to watch your frightened son go from crying to his eyes rolling back and as limp as a dish rag in the space of ten seconds. I went out into the waiting room and wept while asking all the questions that a father asks at those times. “Why did we do this? Couldn’t we have done it another way? Do they know what they are doing and did they give him to much anesthesia?” I know these questions are irrational but when you are on the other side of the world from your wife and family, it’s different. I had my Bible with me and spent the time reading portions of scripture about the eye and then turned to Isaiah 40. God really touched my heart again as I read the promise He made to his children Israel, to shepherd their hearts and gently carry those with young. Oh that lifted up my spirit as I realized that I was “with young.” Not in a reproductive way of course, but I was alone with a young child that I was responsible for and God was saying that He would gently carry me! Oh how I rejoiced!

When they called me into the recovery room, Wayne was just beginning to wake up and was still very groggy and VERY hungry since this growing boy had had nothing to eat or drink since almost 8 hours earlier! After he was able to swallow water fine, they let me give him a bottle of milk and then he was a little better able to cope with the fact that his one eye was sore and he could not open it or rub it. We were able to then go back to our room though he had to keep the IV in for a few hours more. Speaking of our room! We were able to pick what kind of room we wanted. When was the last time that you got to do that in a hospital?! We got the second best kind of room which had a balcony, sofa sleeper, soft, padded chairs, table, and private bath with a shower, refrigerator, wardrobe, and all the patients’ meals, for the royal price of about $70 a day! We didn’t get to much sleep that night though because the nursing staff had not every had a white baby in before and couldn’t get over seeing a baby with such long eye lashes, blond hair, and such a ready smile. They had to keep peeking in to see if he was awake yet and since the surgery had gone so well and Wayne was so happy, I didn’t care a bit!


The next morning they came and changed the bandages and Wayne’s was clean and his eyes briefly looked straight at me…I almost wept for joy! The surgeon moved the muscle back as far as is possible and it brought Wayne’s eye into a close enough alignment that his brain should now be able to see the two images and pull them together. Wayne still does not always focus on you due to the fact that he still has stitches in there and it makes it slightly uncomfortable to move the eye very far. They sutures will disappear within three weeks and after that is when we should see the greatest improvement. The doctor told us that it may take up to six months for his brain to learn to pull that eye consistently into alignment and “fuse” them together like yours and mine. If it doesn’t do it by then, we may have to tweak the other eye a little to get them to line up. We will be seeing the local doctor here to see what he thinks and to keep up to date with his progress.

While in Thailand, we visited several different places, the highlight being our weekend trip to Chiang Mai to see Deaniel Yoder and the rest of the staff at GTO. The weather was quite warm over there with the daily high being in the 90’s and getting down to 75 at night. Thank God for A/C!!!! Now, last night when we arrived home, it was 120 degrees colder that what we had left in Bangkok, -26! Yowsers, was it COLD!!!

I now have my work cut out for me as I have 30 sewing machines waiting for me and jet lag to conquer! It is great to be working at home this time since if I wake up at 3:00 in the morning again, I can get up and head to the basement to work on the machines.

I will probably post more tidbits in the days to come but for now this will have to do since I am starting to get slightly sleepy and that is a good feeling. Thanks again for all your support for me and my wife during this time!