A House For My Kids

Dear Friends,

Thanks again for checking in…and for your prayers.

Sean is still in the hospital…he had major surgery a week ago (on the 20th?) They discovered that he had an abcess on the out side of his right lung and that had caused alot of trouble…they went in through his side and scraped off the infection. They also did a third Bronchoscopy ( in as many weeks) and this time felt as if they got him cleared more than they had the previous two times.

Still working on the Staph infection…still on pain management…and we are praying for God to touch his little lung and restore it.

We are grateful to God that the doctors finally found this very serious problem. His right lung was almost completely overtaken with infection. This is a problem that we believe has been there throuh a couple of different hospital stays. We just have not found it yet. The doctors were shocked at the severity of what they found on the CT scan.

Looking forward to when we can take him home.

I am in Florida with Jeffrey, Katie and Grace. I played a concert for an awesome group of people Saturday night at the Holmes Ranch in Lithia, Florida…near Brandon. Had a great time, made some new life-long friends, discovered a few things I need to work on for future concerts, and got to sing at his Church on Sunday Morning. Mr Mike Holmes is the publisher of the Horse and Tack magazine. The largest Equestrian Publication in Florida.

I am driving home on Tuesday, the 29th…slight chance that Sean will be able to come home this week. Diane has been there in the hospital room with Sean since Wednesday night the 23rd…you know…just hanging out and eatin’ bon-bons.

Once again…God has provided our needs with the love offerings at the two concerts.

Hoping to gather together all of the remaining details with the property issue and we can move forward with the next step toward building this house for our kids.

Dear Friends

Sean is back in the hospital since wed. night…side hurting…X-Ray showed a blockage in the upper right lobe of the lung. This is left over from the previous bronchoscopy…they couldn’t get it completely cleared from the lung…Had another bronchoscopy this morning…got a lot but still needed to get more cleared out. Doctor says that if this continues then we need to discuss whether Sean would be better off without that upper right lobe of his lung.

PLEASE join us in prayer asking God to clear this out of the lungs for Sean…
Sean is also plagued with a staph infection in this part of his lungs…this seems to be what’s making things bad. I am begging God to kill the staph infection and take this and do what only He can do. Please join us in this prayer. Please pray for my wife.

Thanks for checking in.

Dear Friends,

We are home from the hospital. Jeffrey and Sean did great! Then on Tuesday night, Sean’s belly got tight and he began to throw up violently. We have experienced this before. Jeffrey has had 3 surgeries because of an obstructed bowel. We knew as Diane made her way to the emergency room with Sean that we were headed for surgery.

I was in Houston, Texas at a Cowboy Church Pastor’s conference. When I got the call from Diane, I told my friends there about it and they immediately began praying for my family.

The X-Ray on Tuesday night showed clearly, a pocket of air behind an obstruction. This can be impacted stool or a kink in the bowel. We’ve experienced both that resulted in surgery.

By the time I got home on an early flight from Houston, Sean was passing gas ( yes we celebrate this at our house ) and all the symptoms had gone away. He was able to eat pop sickles and drink fluids. Later in the day he had a bowel movement that removed all doubt.
The CF Doctor and the Surgeon came in to see Diane after a second X-Ray on Wednesday and said this…

‘We can’t explain it…the X-Ray from last night, showed a textbook picture of a blockage that required surgery…and today it shows nothing’

Did you catch that? We are saying Thank You Lord at our house!!

God provided our every need this past week. On Monday when I left for Houston, I felt like a gambler going off to spend my last five dollars. I was not sure why I was going…I just knew that I was supposed to go. Before I left to come home (earlier than planned,) the Pastor handed me a gift. They had taken up a love offering for our family. I should call it a ‘lotta love’ offering. We have also received numerous CD orders and invites to come play and sing because of this conference trip.
Diane was at the hospital with Sean when I called to tell her not to worry about the money I had to spend to get home early. God had taken care of it all! You can imagine her reaction to such grace.

We have been at a stand still with house plans because of some questions that have needed answering about the land. We’re gonna put this in the ‘God has taken care of it’ slot also.

The gentlemen from Florida that gave us an acre of land to build on came to Tennessee and examined the reasons why we couldn’t build on that piece of land…the solution they came up with is to give us another third of an acre that adjoins our piece that should provide a building site. We believe that this has resolved our land crisis and we hope to be moving forward again.
We now need to clear that piece, get the legal work done and then the next eight thousand dollars worth of CD sales will go toward running the sewer, electric, and water to the property. We will be tempted at that point, to move into a temporary trailer on the building site because then it will be time to start building.
By the way, Thanks to Jackie Heatherly at Executive Title in Mt. Juliet for donating the deed work for this land.

Thank you to our dear friend Mike Chambers for coming to Vanderbilt and staying the night while both boys were there in separate rooms. Diane needed to take the girls home and we needed someone in each of the boys rooms. Mike was there and has been available ever since for whatever else we might need.
Thank you to our dear friends Jim and Polly Blanton for taking the other three kids while Diane went to Vandy with Sean. Polly stayed the night at our house with the kids…cooked, cleaned, changed Jeffrey’s IV out at the appointed time ( according to Jeffrey’s instructions), contended with Grace to do her treatments and to go to sleep, Listened to every word that Katie had to say about a variety of subjects. There are so many more friends to mention,  I can’t keep up.

Once again we are so grateful to you all for your prayers and for keeping up with us through this site. Please write or call anytime…615 668-3908

For those of you in Florida, come see the concert in Lithia on May 26th. 7 PM at the Holmes Ranch near Tampa.

God Bless you all!

gregmcdougal@ahouseformykids.com

P.O. Box 1756
Mt. Juliet, Tn. 37121