Ryan Hoffman

On October 13th, 2010, while visiting friends in Florida, our almost 2 year old son climbed down from his chair at the dinner table to follow his siblings to the kitchen to get dessert.  On the way, he took a detour, unbeknownst to us, to the pool to pull a toy out.  He fell in and was down for probably over 15 minutes in very hot water.   Thankfully, our dear friend Tami found him; and his father and Uncle Kirk revived him with CPR.   He was life flighted from Sarasota Florida to All Children's in St. Petersburg.  After a week in ICU then a week to stabilize, he was transferred to Denver Childrens for the next 3 months, with little progress in recovery, although we were blessed with a lot of support from friends and family.   This is our journey down the path of living with a brain injured child.  We are hopeful for Ryan's recovery, and continue to covet your prayers.  

(from Journal Monday 10/17/2010);
Thank you so much for all of your prayers, notes of encouragement and support.  We can’t tell you how much it means to us.

 

For those of you who haven’t heard, our 22-month year old son Ryan nearly drowned last Wednesday night, Oct 13 in a pool while we were on vacation in Sarasota Florida.  After pulling his seemingly lifeless body out of the water after a hopefully brief, but unknown period of time, we started CPR.  After 5 minutes the ambulance showed up and took over.  In route to the local hospital they discovered he had a pulse and he started to do some breathing on his own.  After getting briefly stabilized he was life-flighted here to All-Childrens’ Hospital in St. Petersburg where he has been in the pediatric ICU.

 

Saturday morning they were finally able to remove the breathing tube they had put in, and to take him off the sedatives. But unfortunately he didn’t wake up as we had hoped.  Then Saturday night Ryan started having ‘subclinical seizures” – brain seizures that you don’t see in the body but they can see in the brain.  They put him on anti-seizure medication but informed us Sunday morning that this means that Ryan does have brain damage.  They said his permanent condition could range from learning disabilities to needing full assistance in everything from eating to going to the bathroom. 

 

The doctors said “He won’t be the same kid you knew.”  This has broken our hearts.  We can’t image Ryan not being the tough, joyful, adventurous little guy that we know and love.  We want him back just the way he was, with all of the awesome potential that he had.  We are at a point of needing to choose what and who we believe in.  Can God use this situation, which the devil meant for evil, to show His Glory?  Can He sustain us through this terrible trial? We believe He can.  We believe that He has a plan for Ryan’s life, and He will reveal His glory to us through this situation. 

This is the story of our journey