Meet Joshua. He is 9 years old. Until March 2005, he was your normal, happy, healthy boy. So what changed in March, you might ask? That is when we got our first hints that he was suffering from a very serious breathing disorder.

March 2005, Joshua was recovering from a throat infection. He was feeling better and back to school, but very tired. He would come home, lay down on the couch and fall asleep - for the rest of the day. This happened a few days before I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I thought giving him a bath would help liven him up enough to get his homework done or to at least eat dinner. But he came out of the tub, very light headed and weak in the legs. He fell down in front of me. I discovered, then, that he was also running a fever. I thought his antibiotic must not have been working, so we needed to get him into a doctor for more.

We took him to an emergency clinic right away. By the time we got there, though, Joshua's lips and fingers were turning blue. They found that his blood oxygen saturation level had dropped from the normal 98-100 range down to 50! They put him on oxygen and called for an ambulance.

He was admitted into the hospital quickly and put through many tests to try and find the cause of his sudden health troubles. No answers could be found. But by morning, Joshua had gone into respiratory arrest! He was resuscitated and intubated. His father and I were falling to pieces watching all of this. And doctors continued testing and probing and scratching their heads.

A few days later, still in ICU, Joshua's left arm and leg went numb and he could not move them. The doctors were still baffled. Their best guess was that Joshua had an auto-immune disorder. And they gave him powerful steroids to try and reverse an attack on his systems. A few days later, he seemed to be recovering. He could move his left arm and leg again and was beginning to be strong enough to breathe on his own. So after two weeks in the hospital, Joshua was released to go home. He would continue receiving physical and occupational therapy on an outpatient basis.

Joshua went back to school. He enjoyed the summer break. He was getting stronger and seemed to be doing better - with the exception of a sudden unexplainable weight gain and mood swings. We thought it was a reaction to the steroids and his coming off of them - and expected things to get better with time. Then Joshua went back to school in the fall.

Two weeks into the new school year, and Joshua started feeling a little sick again. His throat hurt and he was very sleepy again. This time, I took him right away to the doctor. Joshua's blood oxygen saturation level was beggining to drop again - so far down to 80 percent. The doctor recommended I take Joshua back to the hospital to the ER. By the time we got there, Joshua's O2 sats were down to 68! He was again admitted to a hospital - but this time, he was taken to a special children's hospital across town. Hopefully the new doctors there could come up with a diagnosis.

The day after being admitted to the children's hospital, Joshua had to be intubated again. And he had to go through all the same tests - plus more. He was again in the ICU - this time for 6 weeks! Most of that time, he had a tube down his throat so a ventilator could breathe for him. Doctors asked us to allow them to surgically place a tracheostomy tube in his throat, so he could still have a ventilator but could finally talk and eat again. We agreed, thinking this would be a short-term fix.

Three days after the tracheostomy procedure, was Joshua's 9th birthday. He was still in isolation in the Pediatric ICU and could not see his friends or much of his family on this very special day. And he was still not able to eat. It was heart-breaking for me. But Joshua was quite a trooper through all of his ordeal so far. Despite some disappointment, he still enjoyed the gifts he received and tried to make the most of things.

For more on Joshua's story, stay tuned for more of my blog entries. You can also read blogs I've written in MySpace ~ at www.myspace.com/vanessa1973.