When life is at stake

This morning at dawn I got a call from a good friend of mine. I learned that she just gave birth prematurely to her son last Friday and that there were some challenges that her baby has to hurdle to get past the danger zone. She was distressed and asked me to call my best friend, who is her husband, fearing for his welfare having been through sleepless night since Friday getting through this unexpected ordeal.

My wife and I reflected on what is happening and felt sad that it has to happen twice to them. Their first born, who is now 8 years old, was also born premature and had to struggle too when he was a baby, to survive. Now, it has happened again with their second born.

We reflected at our own time with our first born, who was also born premature at almost 7 months. He too had to go through a lot. He spent his first 18 days of his life in an incubator and he had to go through 4 years of tedious therapies just to get him up to speed with his age peers. He is fine now, celebrating his 8th birthday today and adequately coping up with mainstream school here in Singapore.

I can feel the pain of my friend as he recounted the last 3 days on what his wife and baby have been going through in the hospital. Not to mention the costly medical bills that have been racking up since Friday. In essence, what he says is that in spite of the superior medical support here in Singapore and the successful operation of a life threatening clot, his baby's chance of survival depends largely on his (baby son's) will to survive, which for the love of God, has been positive & strong so far.

There is nothing one can do except to say hold on and believe that things will be better. When it is life, especially if it's the life of your own flesh and blood, that is at stake, you have to believe that the tide will turn in your favor.

A few minutes back, I just called another friend, and told him about the ordeal of our friend, who is his first cousin. He too was shocked and had nothing to say. We knew that there is nothing one can do except to commiserate and say a prayer for our friend's son.

When a life is at stake, you can only turn to prayers for solace, and hopefully salvation.