Daniel's Story Chapter 1

You will see that some chapters are missing. Those, I still have not finished writing yet.

1. Introduction
((uploaded Nov 1, 2000 last update Dec 12, 2000)


There is hardly anything more terrible than seeing ones own child dying.
It happened to my wife Yuki and me on August 17, 2000. In this book we want to share with you what happened with our son, our feelings, and most of all how God led us through everything with his grace and mercy. This book contains some medical facts, but it is clearly centered around Daniel's life story. We will share our thoughts, emotions and feelings with you. We have never felt God's grace and mercy more in our life than in our darkest hours. He gave, and is still giving us the strength to go trough all this. The Lord used Daniel powerfully in our lives, in his friends life's, in his school and also in our church.
This book is not a manual to 'overcome grief in 10 steps'. Neither is it only about the medical facts.
With this book we want to show how God guided us, gave us strength and hope. We will not paint the picture of Daniel's life through pink glasses, even though we pray that this book will encourage and help people who were or are going through similar experiences.

Daniel was born on April 10th, 1990, in the St. Hildegardis hospital in Mainz, Germany. After a normal pregnancy he was our 'wish child'. Directly after the normal delivery nothing pointed to the severe condition he was in. Only a few hours after the birth the nurse realized he was getting blue in the face. Rushed to the university Hospital in Mainz, he had his first operation when he was three days old. A second one followed when he was 1 year old. We then moved to Japan, where he was operated three more times. The last operation was in Jan. 1997 in the famous Joshi Idai in Tokyo, where Prof. Takanashi successfully performed a Fontan Operation. Daniel went to Kindergarten in Sapporo and was enrolled in a regular Japanese elementary school in April 1997. His health situation got dramatically worse in Jan 1999, when he was hospitalized with a lung infection. Later in spring he was diagnosed with high blood pressure in his lungs. In 2000 he was hospitalized 6 times, but did not recover. He was last hospitalized on July 25th, 2000 with an intestinal infection from which he eventually died on August 17.