Remembering Parker: Day 3 - Sunday, July 10th

Sunday was a lot more waiting... hoping... praying... wanting to see Parker's eyes open and see him smile and respond again. He just lay there. We all took turns standing by his side... caressing his head, kissing him, talking to him.... he lay there. The medications were coming off, which was good, but he wasn't responding, which was even worse because we couldn't use the excuse of "Parker's not responding because of all the medications". My heart sunk as I learned basically all the medications were no longer being used and I still saw him laying there, not responding to touch.



Later that day the doctors felt we could take Parker off the ECMO machine, you can see from the photograph of my dad next to Parker that the big huge machine is no longer next to our son. We were so grateful for all the doctors and nurses who helped run the ECMO machine 24 hours a day to give our son a chance to live. Parker did really well coming off of the machine. He didn't have any issues. Because of this they would do the MRI test the next morning. We looked forward to this as we hoped the MRI would give us hope that our son would be able to recover and yet in the back of our minds we feared what the result might be as well.

We went to bed that night being grateful Parker was able to get off the ECMO machine and also for the love and support we were given by family and friends. Most of Rodger's family was living in the midwest and east so those who came at this time were mostly my family and our friends. We are so grateful for their sacrifice in coming all the way to PCMC, sometimes every day, to be there with us through this incredibly hard time. It helped to not be alone. Please let Monday be a good day! We went to sleep to try and get rest, praying we wouldn't get a knock at our door of bad news. We were drained.