A Kentucky pastor is calling on his community to assist the family of a two-month-old infant who remains hospitalized with rhinovirus (RSV) and croup.
Mother Brianna Halbert, who has already suffered the tragedy of losing two newborns, was severely worried over the health of her infant son Grayson Cook when he was rushed to the hospital last week, WYMT reports.
The infant displayed symptoms of illness on December 21 and was taken to Cabell Huntington Hospital. He was ventilated the following day and remains on the device over a week later.
“Now we’re just kind of here on the ventilator from RSV, rhinovirus, and the croup,” Halbert told WYMT.
The ordeal has triggered some traumatic memories for Halbert and Grayson’s father, Trevor Cook.
“It brings back a lot of memories,” she told WYMT. “We had two boys with dwarfism. The first one passed away September 6, 2018. He had a type of dwarfism that wasn’t able to make it at birth. He took four breaths with the doctors and then passed away.”
Just two years later, on October 8, 2020, the couple experienced immeasurable heartbreak yet again as their second son was stillborn. Halbert, a mother to two older daughters, endured a house fire and flood following the traumatic losses, WYMT reports. After immense struggle and heartache, she learned she was pregnant with Grayson.
“Losing the two boys and then seeing him on the ventilator,” she recalled. “I sometimes feel like, ‘What did I do to get this?’ But then I feel like God wouldn’t put me through it if I couldn’t do it.”
She spent Christmas by her son’s bedside and has been unable to work or spend much time with family while looking after him.
“I had only been back to work two weeks from maternity leave,” she said. “And I’m here, so I can’t work.”
She took to Facebook to ask for prayers from friends and family, which caught the eye of a complete stranger, Pastor Ray Davis.
“He didn’t know me from Adam and Eve. He didn’t know me, you know, personally or anything like that,” she told WYMT. “So when he reached out to me, I kind of realized my story had touched a lot of people’s hearts.”
Davis is a pastor at First Assembly of God in Martin.
“I pastor this church, but I believe that’s the purpose of the Church. It doesn’t matter whether I know them or not. To reach out and show that we are the Church,” Davis told WYMT. “We’re the hands and feet to do and go and to make a difference in somebody’s life.”
He established a Go Fund Me on December 28 to benefit Brianna and her family. He shared the page on his Facebook and, thus far, the Go Fund Me has raised $2,200 of the $10,000 goal.
“To help somebody like this, in a moment that you know they don’t have any answers? Man, to see the outpouring like this is just it’s it’s fantastic,” he told WYMT.
Halbert told WYMT that her son has displayed signs of improvement and said she feels blessed over his progress.
“If you would have seen him a couple days ago? I mean, I literally felt like I was losing another child,” she said.
On December 28, Grayson had enough strength to grab onto his mother’s finger, according to Halbert’s Facebook. She and her family hope that doctors can soon begin to slowly take Grayson off of the ventilator.
Davis explained we should never underestimate the power of prayer.
“You know, oftentimes, God answers prayers through people,” he told WYMT.
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