Does God Know How to Suction?

It's with a heavy heart that I write to you...

Our sweet Ella girl went to Heaven on Saturday morning.

Her passing was really sudden and we are still trying to figure out everything and how to live without our precious girl. We have said many times that our lives were changed more on Saturday morning than it did when she was born.

For the last 14+ months we have fought alongside Ella and asked Jesus for her healing each and every day and now she is healed.

At 5:43am we got a phone call from our nurse, Rochelle, who has been with us five nights a week, 9-11 hours a night since we brought Ella home in October. She asked us to come downstairs because something was different about Ella. I ran downstairs and Rochelle quickly explained that Ella was in heartblock, which was her norm since April, then something in her behavior changed and her heart rate dropped lower than normal and she was now not responding. We called Ella's name and tried to get her to respond, but nothing was working. Rochelle quickly started giving compressions and Matt was on his way downstairs and I called to him and asked for him to call 9-1-1. He calmly called and Rochelle directed us to do different things to help prepare for the paramedics. They arrived and took Ella to the hospital in Grass Valley and continued CPR as we followed in our car with Rochelle.

We got to the ER and a few minutes later the doctor came out and told us they were trying everything they could and I said, "...but it's not looking good right?" and he said, "Yes, it's not looking good." We told him we just didn't want to make the decision to stop, so he did for us. We think that she passed at home really quickly because she never responded after.

We really related to something that another family that lost their child wrote, "As a family, we walked with her as far to heaven's gate as humanly possible, and even then we still lingered to make sure she was safely inside." We stayed with Ella's body in the hospital for a while and our parents were able to come and say goodbye as well.

We saw God's hand in a lot of the details from that morning. Eli was sleeping through the whole process of having the first responders in our home and we live so close to the Waechters so they were able to come to our house to watch him until our friends came to get him. She didn't pass away at Sutter so our PICU family didn't have to be there when she passed and I won't remember that hospital as the place where we lost Ella. We spent a great night outside the night before celebrating Linda's (my mother-in-law) birthday and Ella was so happy. We prayed that God would make it clear when it was her time and that we would not have to make the decision of letting her go and we didn't have to. Matt's brother and our sister-in-law were planning on coming up on Saturday to go to a theme park with Matt's parents so they just made the trek a little further up to Grass Valley. We also had a special relationship with Ella's night nurse and were thankful to have her with us during the traumatic experience. And much more.

Speaking of Eli, telling him was hard, but also sweet. As Shakespeare says, "such sweet sorrow". Once we got back, he walked into our house and asked where Ella was and where we were. We responded with, "We were at the hospital," and he asked if Ella was there and then we all sat on the couch and talked about how Ella was now in Heaven with Jesus. I've never seen him cry like he did. It was different than any other time. It was full of sadness and we could tell he understood as much as any four year old can. He told us that now our family had no babies. He ran to her room and looked in her bed and cried a little more. Then he got panicked and said, "SHE FORGOT HER EQUIPMENT!!!" because her ventilator and everything was still by her bed. We explained how she didn't need a trach anymore and how she was healthy in Heaven.

We had our family with us the rest of the day and we would take little breaks and go into Ella's room to cry and just sit. Eli came with us a couple of times and one of the times that he went in there with Matt he asked, "Does God know how to suction?" (meaning suction her trach). It is something that I will never forget.

As with any loss, we've struggled and tried our best to press into God for his strength. We have received many text messages and phone calls and have loved reading them. Thank you for reaching out and letting us know you love us.

I will write another post about Ella when I am in a better state, but for now I just want to thank you for the amazing support you've all shown us throughout this journey. Please continue to pray for us as we adjust to this "new norm". Please pray for our families and for our medical staff who grew to love Ella as their own.

We are hoping to have Ella's service on August 10th, but it is not officially set yet.

Love,
Jillian