Sunday, April 3, 2005

The story... again..
I know you guys pretty much read what has happened. and all i really have to post is the article from yesturdays paper. Crystal will have the her news on her site. (Badkitty172002)

Girl's parents hold out hope, despite prognosis
Hit by a car, 5-year-old Faith Ferguson in coma
Saturday, April 02, 2005
BY JO COLLINS MATHIS
News Staff Reporter
As his daughter lay in a coma in intensive care upstairs, Paul Ferguson sat on a bench at Mott Children's Hospital, strong but fighting back tears.

"The doctors say she'll never wake up, but I can't give up on her," he said, his voice and eyes fatigued. "It's going to take a miracle."

A few feet away, a man pushing a woman in a wheelchair posed for a picture with their newborn baby bundled in pink. An older woman - perhaps a proud grandmother - snapped the picture.

The Fergusons were that proud couple five years ago January. He remembers the day well: He walked backwards down that same hallway, past Big Bird, his video camera zoomed in on his wife, Heather, and their firstborn. It was Heather's birthday.

Two years earlier, Heather had given birth to a stillborn daughter.

They named this baby Faith. "Because that's what Heather needed," he said.

On Wednesday, Faith was struck by a car while apparently trying to stop her 2-year-old brother, Cameron, from running into the street. She was thrown through the air and suffered severe brain injuries when she hit the pavement.

Now doctors offer little hope as dozens of friends and family keep vigil.

Ferguson said doctors told him their main goal now is to keep the brain from swelling. "They said it's going to be day by day for the next few days," he said. "We just have to wait and see."

The Fergusons are separated, and Faith had been living with her mother and brother at the home of her maternal grandmother, Diane Riddle, in Ypsilanti. Riddle said she had expressed worries just before the accident about traffic on the road where Paul Ferguson's mother lives.

"I work midnights at Eastern (Michigan University) and when I got home Wednesday morning, I said to Heather, 'We gotta keep the kids away from Bunton Road. Cameron's too fast,"' recalled Riddle. "I just wish I had acted on it. It's a nightmare."

Later Wednesday, Heather Ferguson dropped her children off at Paul's mother's house on Bunton Road while she went to work at the Carpenter Road Target store.

A neighbor stopped by with her two children to pick up Paul's mother, Faith, and Cameron. When the driver asked her two children to go get the mail across the street, they left the door open. Cameron climbed out of the van to follow the other children, and Faith ran after him.

The three children made it safely across the street.

"But Faith came out of nowhere," said Ferguson, 28, of Ypsilanti Township.

Ferguson said his mother is consumed with grief, and begged him not to hate her.

"I said, 'I don't blame you. You can have Cameron over at your house any time,"' he recalled. "And to be optimistic, I said, 'When Faith gets out of the hospital, you can have her over, too.' "

Cameron, oblivious to the adults' pain, spends his time at the hospital running from one relative to another, laughing.

"He has no idea," said his father, picking him up.

Riddle said Faith loves both grandmas, is very shy, but very dramatic, and loves dressing up like a princess.

"I just want to scoop her up," she said, of her visits to her hospital bedside, where Faith's blue "night night," the silky nightgown she's slept with since she was a baby, is tucked under her arm.

Riddle said Faith has enjoyed knowing she has a sister in heaven who watches over her.

"She likes to go to the cemetery with flowers for Sissy," she said.

Paul Ferguson, a custodian who is between jobs, said it doesn't bother him to see the babies at Mott.

"It's seeing the ones close to Faith's age," he said, his eyes filling with tears. "To think she may never walk again ... I try to keep hope, but all the doctors tell me it's bad."

The Fergusons aren't ready yet to think about discontinuing life support.

Paul Ferguson followed the Terri Schiavo case, never imagining he would soon be involved in a similar life-and-death decision.

"It's a decision I don't have to be confronted with yet," he said. "Not yet."

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