| By Mark McGuire — 1 hour agoThis is my post on Facebook.It was this time last year that Patrice, Jocelyn and myself faced one of the biggest challenges of our life. Our son Tanner had been involved in an accident and was at Erlanger ER. As Patrice and I left and headed to the hospital we were not prepared for what we would be told. We were greeted by the Erlanger Chaplain and several friends. This was also the day that the cell phones were out of service in our region. Thank you Colton Clark for being on site and doing what you did to help Tanner, you are one of the unsung heroes of our area. Little did we know that our journey would be one of such stress and hurt. Over the next 24 days we did not know if Tanner would live. Tanner also faced a total of six surgeries over the next 5 months. He had both sides of his skull removed, a portion of his brain removed to allow for swelling. Later he would have surgery on his right leg (7 screws and a plate) and they also put in a feeding tube and a tracheotomy. Finally after they saw that Tanner was going to live, the next hurdle was finding out where he would land. I can't explain the gratitude I have for the staff at Erlanger Trauma ICU and Dr. Bohme. They never gave up hope for my son and I will forever be grateful. I would be wrong if I did not say thank you to the people at Tennova who works with Patrice, the management at Sante Fe Cattle Company where Jocelyn works and the Management and friends at Mars Chocolate. After 6 weeks at Erlanger, we transported Tanner to the Shepherd Center in Atlanta. The staff at Shepherd Center was unreal. They treated each of us as if we were their own. The Shepherd Center is truly a place of healing for both the patient and the family. If you ever feel that you are having a bad day, just go there and visit, I promise your outlook will change.As people all over the world prayed for us and supported us I would like to say thank you for hearing my cry and lifting up my family as you did. I never thought that over 100,000 people would read my post on here but you did. My goal when it looked as though we would loose Tanner, I wanted you to know Tanner as we did. I realized later that this had become an outlet for me and I thank you for reading these post.Finally as I sit here and reflect back it is hard to hold back the tears and a few have leaked out but they are tears of joy and rejoicing. I have dread looking at FB today due to the reflections they send you after a year. But then as I read them and I could not help to see where God had brought us from. Today it was different, sitting here listening to Tanner laughing in his bedroom, Jocelyn getting ready to go to college and she even cooked a meal tonight. After all that Tanner and our family went through, we have become a family more centered around God, become closer as a family, and Tanner only has some short term memory loss, can't open his mouth wide due to the muscles being removed, can't smell or hear out of his left ear, but he is in the front yard mowing the grass right now. All I can say is But God. More of Him...less of me.twitter.com/camiracle77www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=691241499&ref=name |