Slow and Steady

I’m sure many of you know the story of the tortoise and the hare. It’s a classic tale where the tortoise shockingly beats the hare in a “foot” race. There are several morals that come from the story, but the phrase many of us know by heart is, “slow and steady wins the race”. The funny thing is, despite the fact that most of us can recall that phrase, and the story by heart, we often forget that lesson in our day to day lives. We live in a culture that glorifies the hare. We seek to be more efficient and more productive, always rushing from one thing to the next in our effort to climb the proverbial ladder as we seek what we believe will bring us ultimate satisfaction and happiness. And yet, this age old story holds within it the wisdom of truth which so often contradicts what our culture tells us, “slow and steady wins the race”.

Well, not surprisingly, Liam is demonstrating the truth of this fable in his journey here at the hospital. We had another slow but steady day of eating at 15mls per hour. It can feel agonizingly slow to only increase by such little amounts, but the patience paid off today at least as Liam had a much happier day and has tolerated the feeds well. It seems like the slight medication adjustment has helped with the retching, and our hope is that he has a great night of sleep so we can move to 20mls tomorrow.

Another area of concern that we are working on is that over the last few nights Liam has continued to have very agitated and angry moments out of sleep. We thought this might be symptoms of withdrawal but after having another episode last night the thought process as changed to thinking it could be some hospital delirium setting in. As a result we doing our best to stick as closely as possible to his at home routine so he can get better sleep, and additionally will give a small dose of a medication used for this type of thing to see if it helps.

All in all it has been a successful day, and we are grateful for all the prayers. Your continued prayers are so welcome as we hope for a string of slow and steady progress so we can get Liam back home. May God greatly bless you and your family always.