Jayd and Tauni McFerson live in the Cedar Park Ward of the Austin Texas Stake with their 2-year-old son, Coen and newborn daughter, Ella.

Coen has been plagued with medical problems since his birth. He was born only after spending several hours in the birth canal, and then spent the first week of his life in the neo-natal ICU recovering from his birth trauma.

Early in his life his parents noticed Coen had problems with his left leg while sitting and crawling. He then began having severe muscle contractions and spasms, sometimes lasting several hours, several times a day and especially after going to bed at night. These painful spasms caused Coen to cry repeatedly and placed great stress on his parents.

Photo courtesy of Jayd and Tauni McFerson

After two surgeries on his left hip, Coen has had to wear a lower body cast to ensure his left femur remains properly seated in his hip socket.

The McFersons took him to many medical practitioners in an attempt to discover the root cause of Coen's problem, including pediatricians, orthopedists, chiropractors, naturopaths and other alternative medical personnel. Many theories were presented, but no one had a clear understanding of Coen's problem or suggested a definitive plan of action leading to a solution. In the meantime, the contractions continued, becoming more severe as Coen finally began walking at age 2. Apparently, the increased use of his left leg was causing the problem to become more acute and the symptoms more frequent.

During an orthopedist appointment in late January at the Scottish Rite Hospital in Dallas, an MRI revealed that Coen had a rare bone condition called "osteoid osteoma of the left acetabulum," which in layman's terms is when a bone tumor grows in the left hip socket. This causes irritation between the hip socket and the ball of the femur bone which rests in the socket, causing local inflammation and leading to the painful muscle contractions. This is why the condition became worse when Coen began walking because he was putting more stress on the hip socket.

Photo courtesy of Jayd and Tauni McFerson

Rhoberta Blakemeyer tended to baby Ella while the McFersons calmed Coen down.

When an opening unexpectedly became available in the surgery schedule, Coen was scheduled for surgery the next day to scrape the bone tumor out of the hip socket. The family was told they would be in Dallas for several days until Coen had recovered well enough to return home, but that they would all be able to live in the room with Coen. Needless to say, the family was not prepared for such an extended stay, expecting to be in Dallas for just the one day of the doctor's appointment.

The surgery consisted of making a large incision in the left hip, popping the femur out of the socket (a risky procedure because it cuts off the blood supply to the femur and forces the surgeons to work quickly), scraping the tumor out of the hip socket, and then putting everything back together again and sewing up the incision. During the long recovery process, the family began to grow "stir crazy" living in Coen's small room with a recovering child in pain as well as a newborn baby and all the complications associated with that. Since they were several hours away from their home in Austin, and with previous family commitments preventing both sets of grandparents from providing extended assistance on such short notice, the young family had no one to turn to for help.

Photo courtesy of Jayd and Tauni McFerson

John Tippets comforted Coen's younger sister Ella during a protracted hospital stay.

When updated about Coen's and the family's condition, Jayd's father Jim in California called John Tippets, his old friend from their college days at UCLA, and asked him if he could visit Jayd's family at the hospital and give them some comfort and relief. Brother Tippets lives in Colleyville, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. In an extraordinary example of true Christian service, Brother Tippets not only went to visit the McFersons at the hospital, but he took them a complete dinner from one of the fine restaurants in the Dallas area. Brother Tippets also assisted Jayd in giving blessings to Coen and Tauni, since the mother was overwhelmed from concern for her son and was physically exhausted from the hospital schedule and the demands of her new baby.

When the pathology report came back from the surgery, it showed they had not gotten the entire tumor and that a second surgery was required. About one week after the first surgery, a second one was performed on little Coen consisting of all of the same painful procedures. This required another multiple-day recovery period for the family. Once again Brother Tippets came to the rescue, bringing in a complete dinner from another restaurant and, even more importantly, giving the young family comfort and a much-needed new friend to talk to.

Also during the second week of recovery, another minor miracle occurred when an old friend with whom Jayd had grown up together in California, Rhoberta Conger Blakemeyer, contacted him unexpectedly on the social networking Web site Facebook via a friend request. When Jayd responded and told her of his family's situation, Rhoberta, who was living in the Dallas area, was able to arrange her busy schedule to come to the hospital and help hold baby Ella while the parents were tending to the needs of Coen.

The service provided by Brother Tippets and Sister Blakemeyer will be remembered forever in the collective memory of the extended McFerson family. Their great service truly extended across three generations of the family, the grandparents, the parents, and the grandchildren.

Finally, after spending two weeks in the hospital, the family was finally able to return home with their two young children. The parents subsequently noted that Coen's left leg still "didn't look right," and it was learned that following the second surgery Coen's left femur was no longer properly seated in the hip socket. Fortunately, it was manipulated back into the socket without another surgery and a lower body cast was placed on him to keep the femur locked in position. This caused him great discomfort, but he is gradually getting used to it and the cast will eventually be removed in April. Happily, the contractions appear to have abated and Coen is on the road to recovery.