Happy New Year!

Although we have yet to receive the miracle of Chase’s complete healing, this has been a wonderful holiday season nonetheless. We continue to see consistent reminders that Chase’s health is on a slow, steady upswing with consistent stability. This week he’s shown a measurable increase in the strength of his legs (mainly resistance tension during his daily PT exercises) and even more upper body movements, including his neck and left shoulder. His breathing continues to improve and we’re beginning to learn more about utilizing a structured approach to completely weaning him off the vent. This is going to be one of our highest goals for the next few weeks.

The outpouring of support that we’ve received during the holidays is overwhelming. All of your prayers, wishes, cards, presents, etc. have lifted our spirits during a very emotionally difficult time. There were four different groups that visited to sing Christmas carols to Chase and filled our house with holiday cheer. He was even personally visited by Santa (since he couldn’t get to the mall) and received all the toys he could possibly play with once he fully recovers. Now it seems like we all need some R&R to gear up for the challenges in the New Year.

We truly feel that during this holiday season, we’ve received the birth of Jesus into our hearts more than ever and we’re being moved to surrender Chase to His infinite mercy. We continue to receive daily reminders of the power of faith and prayer though reading scripture, books, movies, or just word of mouth from our Prayer Warriors, including “…and he had compassion on them and healed their sick” (Matt 14.14). “Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not yet seen” (Heb 11.1)

With all of your support, we’re continuing to keep the faith and believe that Chase will be completely healed in 2007! What a miraculous year this will be – we look forward to the celebrations and expressing our gratitude for all the prayers that are bringing Chase back by popular demand…. We hope you all have a wonderful, prosperous, healthy and safe New Year!


God Bless!!

John & Carol Sammut
Chase & Barbara

Merry Christmas from Carol

Merry Christmas Prayer Warriors and Good Tidings to all. We have decided to send our holiday wishes via the blog instead of Christmas cards this year since so many of our loved ones access it and this will save on the little time we have to spare. As you know, John and I are still very focused on taking care of Chase as he is still in a very precarious condition, but through the grace of God he has made many important improvements in the past few months. He is much more stable, using very little oxygen and seemingly prepared to be completely weaned off the ventilator. This is a hug Alleluia and we take this as a sign of God’s ultimate plan for Chase.

Obviously this past year did not go as we had expected but as you know, it could’ve been worse. Our hearts have been broken through this journey but luckily the Grace of God can turn anything anew. We still anticipate jubilation and the Glory of God to demonstrate the power of prayer and faith. We know that Chase’s buddy Jesus is comforting him and celebrating with him the Promise of everlasting life that His redemption provides.

We expect Chase to be quite different when he awakens from his sleep, due to the spiritual education he’s gotten through this challenge. We will wait for him with open arms and hearts as we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the treasure of friendship and the power of prayer. We have all been witnesses to how one little boy can capture the hearts of so many through his courage and suffering. We couldn’t be more proud of our little trooper.



We thank you all from the bottom of our hearts for supporting us as we walk down this path. It has truly been humbling and comforting because of all you’ve done for us. We will always remember how important this support has been – it has changed our lives and motivated us to do the same for others in difficult situations. This is the true meaning of Christmas.

We also hope that you all have a glorious New Year! We’re confident that 2007 will be a year of many celebrations and rewards for all of our perseverance and faith.

God Bless!!

John & Carol Sammut
Chase & Barbara

Happy Birthday Barbara Ann!

We had a very busy weekend, starting with Barbara’s 8th B-day party on December 7th. Carol did an awesome job organizing a belly dancing party at our house for all of her classmates. They had a great time getting a private lesson from a professional belly dancer and they all loved their coin belts. With all of the focus on Chase, we’ve been delinquent in providing an update on Barbara. Fortunately, she’s been doing great through all of this – according to her teacher, she’s very well-adjusted and generally quite happy at school. She’s also been staying very busy with activities – gymnastics, swimming, brownies, etc. which she really enjoys and this has kept her spirits up along our journey.

We also had another visit today by a large group of Prayer Warriors from Chase’s school, Cranbrook which filled our house with holiday cheer. They sang lots Christmas carols and then prayed over him. We have no doubt that this went a long way to lift his spirits and boost his recovery. After they left, we decided to try to take Chase completely off the ventilator and see how he would do – to our pleasant surprise, he lasted over 20 minutes with no problem at all. All of his vitals (oxygen saturation, heart rate, etc.) were great the whole time. Although he probably could’ve continued longer, we decided to stop at that point because it was getting late in the evening and we didn’t want to stress him out. Nevertheless, this was another excellent indication that Chase continues to steadily improve every day. We’re going to start measuring and charting how long he can tolerate being completely off the vent so that he can get the exercise and build up his strength.

Thanks again to all for the prayers and support – especially Kay, Kathleen, Lucy, Patty and anyone else who helped in organizing the sing along today, as well as all those who attended. It moved us all beyond what words can describe. We are truly grateful for all the love that we are being surrounded by throughout this experience.

God Bless!!

John Carol Sammut
Chase Barbara

Thanks for Another Wonderful Prayer Service

Many thanks to all who joined us for the prayer service this past Sunday in person or in spirit – we have no doubts about the power of this collective prayer effort. Chase reminds us every day – starting with the fact that he’s still with us and we’re now going on 16 months. He’s slowly building momentum with his breathing improvements, as we can measure the amount of pressure support that he needs and the amount of time that he can tolerate lower settings. The overall trend in undeniable and very encouraging.

We’re continuing to pray that Chase will soon be able to open his eyes and respond directly to us – that would just be the most amazing Christmas present we could ever ask for. Please join us in this intention and in gratefully thanking God for hearing and responding to all of our prayers. We believe in making our prayer as specific as possible and this is the next step that we’re focused on for Chase’s recovery. In fact, it wouldn’t hurt to extend this even further and imagine the upcoming headlines of Chase’s blog updates (Chase responds and reawakens, Chase regains movement of his arms, Chase takes his first steps after recovery, etc.).

We hope all of Chase’s Prayer Warriors are preparing for a wonderful holiday season. This time of year is particularly difficult here, as we reflect on the past year – we were just looking through pictures of Chase during his last soccer season, swimming, etc. We long to see those days again – with the help of your prayers, we truly believe it’s just a matter of time, once again. Thanks for all your help and support!

God Bless!!

John Carol Sammut
Chase Barbara

Pray for our Enemies!

We finally got the rest of the file from Henry Ford Hospice and reviewed all the notes. It appears that Dr. Lewandowski was even more vindictive in the submission of the complaint to Child Protective Services (CPS) than we could’ve imagined. After we dismissed her services (due to a serious disagreement on our approach to supporting Chase – i.e. to help him recover, as opposed to expire), she immediately started the process of filing the complaint, as we suspected. However, the CPS organization saw right through the situation and dismissed the charges without pursuing the case further, stating

“Additional contacts were made which determined that the child has not been harmed”.

Apparently, this response wasn’t acceptable to Dr. Lewandowski so she proceeded to stir the pot even further. As documented in detail throughout the file, she organized more meetings and discussions with other conventional practitioners familiar with Chase’s case in order to gain their support for another complaint. She then convinced CPS to review the case once again with the additional information, which is where all the misrepresentations and distortions came in (such as sea salt injections, non-FDA approved treatments, wheatgrass, etc.). Since CPS dismissed the first complaint, she apparently felt that this one needed to include more “concerns” (even though these issues were never discussed with us or even documented in her file).

Thus, CPS decided to review the case again and this time they were persuaded that the situation was so grave that it couldn’t wait for further investigation or contact with the family (heaven knows what they thought we’d do if they contacted us to discuss the complaint). There are many more outrageous details to list, some of which are covered in our summary file which can be viewed at:

http://owa1.epictech.com/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chasesammut/files/Chase%2520Sammut%2520CPS%2520Summary.doc

The bottom line is that this Hospice “practice” is very misguided and although everything worked out well for Chase, we’re concerned that this is typically not the case. Ironically, our story prompted others to approach us about similar bad experiences with Dr. Lewandowski and the same Hospice organization, which didn’t have as positive an outcome as our case. So far, the management of Henry Ford Health System hasn’t taken any corrective action. The CEO of HFHS is John Polanski (jpolans1@hfhs.org). Please forward any comments that were previously submitted directly to his attention so that he can appreciate the gravity of our concerns.

We would also like to keep Dr. Lewandowski in our prayers, since she is clearly misplaced. This is not the kind of help that families in our situation need! Hopefully, more good will continue to come from Chase overcoming these challenges. He continues to improve slowly every day, with very stable vitals, excellent bloodwork (including high Hemoglobin), etc. This is our best retribution for all those who opposed our continued support of his recovery and tried to convince us otherwise.

Please pass along a reminder for the monthly Prayer Service which is going to be held on Sunday, Dec 3rd at 3 pm in the social hall of St. Anastasia church, 4571 John R. Road in Troy. This is for all our sick children for our families and world peace. For more information or special prayer requests please contact Meg Koss 248-828-4419.

We truly appreciate all the prayers and support for Chase and our whole family.

God Bless!!

John Carol Sammut
Chase Barbara