Hi friends, Welcome to the Pointing Toward Hope podcast. I am your host Wendy Bertagnolli. This podcast is filled with positivity for anyone seeking to find more hope and joy in daily life. The goal is to reach as many people as we can to help them to overcome and find joy even in the midst of extremely hard adversity. Thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe and leave a review so that we can help as many people as possible. If you or someone you know has a trial that you have been able to get through or are working through with the help of our Savior, please contact me so we can get you on the podcast. This is episode 42 and Chapter 5 of my book Keep up the pace.
Strength through adversity
You never really lose until you quit trying. —Anonymous
I would like to tell you about an experience I had that tested my ability to maintain a positive attitude. My husband and I had just given birth to our fourth child.
Because my three previous children had been born with the help of a physician through induction, I had prayed long and hard that I would be able to give birth to my last child on my own. I also dreamed, as every woman does, that I would have this child a little early.
I am sure you have heard the statement, “Be careful what you pray for because you just might get it”, well, I was about to find new meaning to that statement. Two weeks before my due date I awoke to a lower back ache. Having been through the process of child birth three times I knew right away that something was different and so I called my doctor’s office. My Doctor had gone on vacation but his nurse encouraged me to come in and be checked. Upon arrival at the office, the nurse checked me and determined that indeed I was going to deliver a child sometime soon.
After a long day of walking the malls and the halls in the hospital, I was finally admitted into the hospital that was filled to capacity with women waiting to deliver (12 to be exact!). Our baby boy was born at about 5:30 p.m. that evening. Things went relatively smooth with the birthing process considering I had a Doctor that I had just met. But, within minutes the nurse noticed that Cody was not breathing properly.
He was quickly whisked away to the nursery where they began a series of x-rays and tests. There were twelve babies born that night and only two nurses were on duty. The hospital was sorely understaffed, especially with an infant that required minute-to-minute monitoring. Consequently, my Doctor chose to have Cody transported to Primary Children’s Medical Center where he would be able to get the intensive care that he needed.
X-rays had revealed that his lungs were clouded and they seemed to be getting worse instead of better. Before transporting, a breathing tube was inserted and Cody was put on a ventilator. I was actually so relieved to see him breathing normally and finally sleeping, even if it was with the help of this machine. My husband checked me out of the hospital early the next morning and we drove straight to Primary Children’s Hospital.
The doctors and nurses had held a conference and decided to treat our son’s condition as a virus and had already started him on antibiotics. They also determined that because he was a little early, his lungs were not quite developed enough to fight off the infection, so they began giving him a drug called Cerfactin to help his lungs develop more quickly. He was showing improvement and the staff encouraged us to go home and get some sleep. I figured that would be a good idea since we had three other children who were still young and needed our attention.
That evening I received a distressing phone call from the hospital. They informed me that our little boy had taken a turn of the worse and that things did not look good. They felt that we should know that they had tried nearly everything and were not receiving a response. They encouraged us to come to the hospital in case the unthinkable were to occur. I did not feel strong enough to endure the possibility of losing him. I just couldn’t do it. So my husband went with a very dear friend who also happened to be our bishop.
While at the hospital they were able to administer a special healing blessing. They called upon God to heal his little body if it be His will. After standing helplessly by for a little while they decided to return home and hope and pray for the best. As my husband and I cried together that night we felt sure that our son would not make it through the night.
We talked of our great love for this child who was not yet forty eight hours old. We both felt it a great privilege to have him as a part of our little family, if only in spirit, for the past nine months. At about two a.m. that morning, we had heard nothing so we decided to call and see how he was doing. The nurse explained that, as a last resort, they had removed the breathing tube and to their dismay found that the cerfactin (the medicine they were administering to help his lungs develop) was clogging the bottom of the tube. The nurse said that they rarely ever changed the ventilator tube from an infant because it was so hard to re-insert, but they were out of options.
There is no doubt in my mind that angels were watching over our son that night and the Doctors as well.
Over the next twelve days it was a roller coaster ride. One day Cody would be improving and next he would slip back. It was very discouraging but I was determined to maintain a positive attitude. I visited him as much as I could but it was very difficult to see him in that environment.
The doctors had decided to put him on a temporary paralysis drug because he was bigger than most of the infants there and he would continuously pull the monitors off as he moved around. It was very difficult to see him lying motionless in the incubator.
We were unable to hold him for seven days, it seemed like an eternity. I will never forget the first time I was able to hold him, still attached to all the monitors and wrapped in a sheepskin blanket that made it hard to feel him in my arms, but I was in Heaven! The next few days became a sort of game as we would try to get him to eat enough and improve enough so that we would be able to take him home. I felt very fortunate to be able to take him home after just two short weeks, when some of the preemies that were his roommates had been there for months.
It was heartbreaking to see the parents come and go each day looking for any sign that their nightmare would end soon. I know it was hard for them to maintain a positive attitude day in and day out as they would receive the same bleak reports. I was amazed to hear their stories and listen to their determination as they would relive their experiences. “How do you get through it”, I remember asking one couple that had spent the better part of three months living at the hospital, a day’s drive from their home. “You get through it one day at a time . . . and you hope and pray for the best!” was their reply.
Positive attitude changes everything! No, we can not change the outcome of a situation. But we can certainly change the attitude with which we choose to face it . . . one day at a time. Not one of us is exempt from adversity. Every single person, at one time or another in their life, will face an illness, the death of a loved one, a divorce, etc. Granted, some people seem to have many more hardships placed upon them than others, but from my experience these people are the most tender, caring, and sensitive individuals I know. They can relate with others on a level that many of us can not. They help many to overcome and rise above the adversity that is placed upon them.
God gives us these trials to make us stronger and to help us learn more about ourselves and others in the process. We can choose to rise above adversity and be better for it, or we can let it control us and ultimately break us down. Most importantly whatever it is that you have been through or are experiencing this very moment……never, never, never, give up!
Your challenge this week: Write down your experiences of trial or adversity that you have had or are having in your life. Record your feelings and be blatantly honest.
If this is a past experience, reflect on the things that you learned from the experience and how you re-acted at the time, and what your feelings are now.
If it is something you are experiencing at this moment, record what you feeling and what you hope the outcome will be. Resolve to look at all of your trials as learning experiences. I have started to do that, while it is not easy to say to yourself while you are in the midst of a trial, “What am I supposed to learn from this?”, (or can I learn)it definitely helps you look at things with a new perspective.
By the way, for those of you that don’t know our son is now a thriving almost 16 year old with loads of energy and love to share. We are so grateful to have him in our lives.
Side note: he was 16 when this book was written. He is now a happily married 27 year old!
Thanks for reading. Have a great week!
XO Wendy
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