My nose hurts!

Last Thursday night my wife and I didn’t sleep. Cyrus, our 9 year old, was in an induced coma after fitting sporadically for over an hour. Jenny had watched him fitting but I had only seen him afterward—he looked asleep.

I sat next to him in the Children’s hospital waiting for him to wake up. The doctor had been in and said, “We’ll let him wake and see how he goes. If he wakes without a problem, we’ll let him wake up fully. But, if he starts to fit again . . .” The doctor paused, “Well, let’s just see how he goes.”

Cyrus had a breathing tube in his mouth that went into his lungs, breathing for him. The nurse said, “When he wakes up, he is going to want that tube out. We’ll have to hold him down so he doesn’t remove it.” She was right. As he woke he fought. His fighting caused him to start breathing for himself. He fell back asleep and the nurse said, “He’s breathing by himself, we’ll ask the doctor if we can take the tube out before he wakes completely.” The doctor said yes and the big tube came out.

There was another tube—a smaller one—that went in his nose and down into his stomach. “He’s not going to like that tube either,” the nurse said. “But, we can’t let him take it out.” She taped the hose to his little nose to make sure it stayed in place.

In the next hour, Cyrus woke bit by bit. He tried, many times, to open his eyes and make sense of his surroundings. We talked to him; told him where he was, told him we were with him, told him we loved him.

The whole ordeal was more stressful than I can ever explain. The thoughts in my head were at war. I wondered if he would wake at all, if he would fit again, if he would be paralysed or brain damaged. The other side of my brain yelled, “Hey! Stop those horrible thoughts! He’s just asleep. He’s gonna wake up and be just fine.” I sat, watching, waiting and hoping.

Slowly he started to cry. “My nose hurts,” he said in a slow drugged voice. My heart did a backflip for joy! He’s talking! He’s not fitting. He’s whinging! Cyrus is back!

When I told him later how happy I was to hear him complain, he looked at me like I was very strange.

“Just to hear your voice,” I said, “to know you were alive and well. Those three little words told me so much!”

I wonder if that’s how God feels about our prayers. He knows we are hurting. He knows what we are going through. But just to hear our voice . . . it must mean the world to Him.