Christine Pheneger 8/23/23 Christine Pheneger 8/23/23

Loving Summer

Overall, Sam is doing really well. He’s been rid of the PICC line since June! His g-tube feedings are running eighteen hours a day, which is kind of a bummer, BUT way better than having a PICC line.

He’s been happy and healthy. Healthy.

Summer is usually good to Sam. He generally stays out of the hospital and virus free. We love summer. He loves summer.

I don’t eat, but I love tasting ice cream!

We have had two doctors tell us, in order for Sam to get his trach (breathing tube) out, he needs to be successful in school for a couple of months. For them, that means stay out of the hospital and off all the hard core treatments when he does get sick. You’ve got this buddy!

He recently had his lab appointment for his new specialty, endocrinology. The poor kid has so much PTSD. He knows as soon as we go through the double doors something bad is going to happen. He did great though. After the poke, he was fine. They drew labs every 15 minutes for an hour. Results will take a couple weeks. As always, we will patiently wait and hope for whatever is best for Sam.

For now, we will continue to enjoy what we have left of this good, busy, beautiful summer. And pray he can start school and stay in school.

Sam Strong

Faith Over Fear

Christine Pheneger 5/21/22 Christine Pheneger 5/21/22

We Have an Answer!!!!!

X-rays showed Sam’s j-tube (the part of his feeding tube that is threaded into his small intestines) is retracted and coiled up into his stomach. As you might imagine, this is very painful. Poor buddy. No wonder why he’s in so much pain and throws up every fifteen to thirty minutes.

At home, radiology does the feeding tube procedure, but it sounds like surgery is the specialty who will do it here. Pray for a quick and smooth procedure tomorrow morning. He gets his feeding tube changed every two to three months and it’s a pretty painful experience for him. This procedure is why he has so much PTSD when he sees an x-ray table. He just had it changed two weeks ago. Poor guy. Hopefully the little bit of morphine he’s on will help.

I feel terrible for him, but this is literally the best possible, fixable answer. This poor guy can barely catch a break. He is the strongest, toughest little boy.

Pray both Sam and I will get some restful sleep tonight and this will be the only complication. We want to hopefully get out of here tomorrow and be able to catch our flight home on Tuesday!

Sam Strong!

Faith Over Fear!

Christine Pheneger 4/4/22 Christine Pheneger 4/4/22

Home

Six days later, we are home. Sam is doing great and back to his happy self. He’s not back to his normal feeds, but we’ll get there. As always, we’re on Sam time.

He, of course, won more hearts during our short stay. The hospitalist said, even when Sam was miserable, he brought a smile to his face every day. "There’s just something about him." Yeah, he does that to people.

He was so excited to see his Will and Abby. And they clearly felt the same.

It’s so great to be able to have visitors again!

Both Sam and I have developed our own PTSD on this journey. For me, when it hits, it hits hard. It's a funny thing too. Sometimes I know it's going to happen and sometimes it comes out of nowhere.

If you've ever been to the Minneapolis Children's campus, there is a skyway from the clinic side to the hospital side. Sometimes there's music playing and sometimes there isn't. The music is always the same. I've walked across this skyway hundreds of times during hospital stays, going to appointments, going to surgeries, or for volunteering.

It was fairly early in the morning. I walked down to get some coffee. I don't know if it was the time of day, or that the music playing, or both, but as I walked through, the traffic I was watching seemed to move in slow motion as the sun was coming up and their lights beamed in my eyes. A lump suddenly formed in my throat and tears started to slowly roll down my cheeks. Why am I crying?! Many of the terrifying moments of Sam's life in the hospital flashed vividly through my mind. Stupid PTSD. I didn't get any coffee because the coffee shop was closed, but I got a something better after I got back.

Every single hospital room at Children’s Minnesota has a Welcome Book both in Minneapolis and St. Paul. If I’m being honest, in all my time at this hospital, I have rarely looked in this book. Sam was watching Blue's Clues on my phone. I wanted to know what the Geek Squad hours were so I could rent him an IPad. I knew the Welcome Book would have this information. As I paged through the book, I came to a screeching halt on the resource page.

There he was!!! My sweet, little miracle baby!!! I couldn’t believe it. Now mind you, a few years ago, before Covid, with all my volunteering I had done at Children’s, I was asked if Sam would do a photo shoot for their marketing purposes. Why not. We knew when he did the photo shoot, they could use the pictures for any of their marketing purposes. We signed a waiver saying so. Since then, we’ve had people text us with pictures of Sam on different Children’s ads. But, the Welcome Book?!?! That was was a shocker for me! And it filled my mama heart at the perfect time.

Christine Pheneger 10/29/19 Christine Pheneger 10/29/19

Why Target?

Target.

I don't know what it is about Target.

Every time I go to Target alone, I get super emotional. There are moments my body seems to freeze up and time feels as though it is standing still. I walk by the sweet mamas talking to their sweet babies while their cute little legs are dangling out of the cart. My heart is happy for them and hurts at the same time. I think about how grateful I am I was able to take my first three sweet babies to Target. Sam has never been to Target or in any store for that matter. Or I go to the baby food section and the only thing I buy is green beans. I don't buy anything else because the only thing, besides formula, we pump into Sam's gj-tube (feeding tube) is green beans. For a moment, I envy the other mamas who are buying other baby food flavors. Stupid, I know. Then I tell myself to buck up and feel grateful for nurses and feeding tubes and life.

Suddenly, it hits me.I figured it out.

PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder.

Yep, kind of weird, I know, but it's a thing and it can happen to anyone who's been through a trauma.

When Sam was "living" in the hospital, I basically lived there too. On the rare occasion I did leave, it was to be with my family or quickly pick-up some toiletries. We lived in twelve different rooms in the seven months Sam was there so I learned to live very sparingly. Guess what store I went to on my rare trips out of the hospital? Yep...you guessed it...Target.

I vividly remember standing in the checkout line at the Target closest to the hospital during an extremely grim time for Sam. I felt like I was the scene in a movie. I looked at the person in front of me, behind me, and everywhere around me wondering what their story was. An overarching question constantly on my mind still to this day..."What's their story?" I remember failing to fight back tears as I stood in line. I quickly wiped away the small tears as I came closer to the checkout. It didn't help there was a proud daddy with his little boy who couldn't have been more than a year old in front of me.

It's crazy how sounds, smells, and/or certain places can bring back vivid moments in your life. Whether they were moments of peace or fear, they were real to you. It's those moments of fear that seem to hit us the hardest. Fear can wrap around you so tightly, it can almost feel hard to breath. It can happen even if you haven't experienced a trauma. I'm guessing we have all had moments like this. When you can stand in faith and know fear is a liar, your happiness can't be taken. That grip of fear slowly releases and a peace that passes all understanding sets in.

Still almost three years later, I have to fight with myself anytime I step foot in a Target alone. Some days there is more fighting than others, but every time I walk out those sliding glass doors, I choose to smile, remind myself, it could be so much worse, and ponder the MANY things I am grateful for.