Pray for Sam

Hi everyone--during this busy season, I am taking even more of a blog break than normal, but this is too important not to write about!

I have a friend from youth group when I was in middle and high schools. His name is Daniel Thompson. He and his wife Jennifer have a baby boy named Samuel. I think they say all of this best, so I am going to post some of the story from their Children's Hospital Care Page:

Shortly after his 20 week ultrasound Samuel Dean Thompson was diagnosed with a heart defect known as HLHS (Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome). In patients with HLHS the left side of the heart is severely underdeveloped and not able to function. The left side of the heart pulls oxygen rich blood from the lungs and distributes it to the rest of the body, with the loss of the left side babies usually have a week or less to live. We were presented with 2 treatment options, a heart transplant or a series of 3 heart surgeries. We chose the surgeries because the thinking is that it is better to make due with the heart you have rather than replace it, if at all possible. The first surgery, which is often called the Norwood procedure, occurred on September 12th. He did wonderfully and recovered better than anyone could have hoped. The medical team couldn't stop saying how they hadn't seen a Norwood recover as well as he did in such a long time. We got home from the hospital on October 26th. We were home for nine days when we went into children's for a routine check up. It was then discovered that his heart function had drastically decreased. We were admitted that night with the plan to administer treatment to get his function back to where it was. Unfortunately the treatment was unsuccessful and the only option left for him was to have a heart transplant. He was placed on the transplant list on December 1st at the highest priority. We are now patiently waiting for a heart to become available that will suit his needs. We maintain the hope that someday through all of this he will finally have a working heart, and the potential for a healthy life.

Currently he is at Children's undergoing a process designed to weaken his immune system so that it is able to take a heart transplant without rejecting it, because currently he could only receive 3 out of 100 hearts, and that is assuming they are the right size.

Here are a few recent pictures:

This is Sam and his daddy, Daniel.

And Sam with the Colorado Avalanche yesterday. (He's also the second image here.)

Please join me in praying for this precious little one! They are hoping to let him go home next week some. Wouldn't it be great to have him home for Christmas!