There were a lot of rough moments.

Concerning moments. Downright scary moments.

But none of them compared or began to prepare Wendy Wray for something her 7-year-old son Wilder told her during one of his several days in the hospital.

Wendy had already gotten her son out of his hospital bed countless times to take him to the restroom and it was time to do it again.

As they made their way, Wilder looked at his mother and uttered words no parent would ever want to hear: “I don’t think I’m gonna make it home, momma.”

••• Wilder Wray is “all boy,” according to his mother.

“He likes to do anything fun, exciting,” said Wendy. “He loves to fish, hunt, ride his bike, play baseball, adventure on the farm and find sheds or treasure.”

His second grade teacher at Lomega, Maci Bedwell, agrees Wilder is “all boy” and can live up to his name.

But he’s got other sides to him as well.

“When I say I’ve never met a kid who’s friends with everyone, I mean it,” Bedwell said. “He will talk and play with pretty much every kid at some point during the day.”

And there’s yet another side that she sees everyday.

“He’s the type of kid who goes out of his way to help someone else,” Bedwell said. “If I have a kid who spills their whole lunch across the cafeteria, Wilder is going to spill his lunch trying to get over to help the other kid.”

He’s not afraid to compliment his teacher.

“He’s the first kid to notice when I’m wearing something new or change my hair even a little,” Bedwell said.

And he makes sure to give his peers their proper credit.

“He will genuinely go out of his way to compliment another student on something he knows means a lot to them, or that they worked hard on,” Bedwell said.

••• In the early morning hours of Thursday, Nov. 6, there was a random power flash at the Wray home.

It was about 3:30 a.m. and it woke up Wilder.

“He complained of a stomach ache, but we thought it was just from being woken up and got him back to bed,” Wendy said.

A couple hours later he was up again and complaining about his stomach.

At 6 a.m., other ailments began arising. First it was diarrhea and then, shortly after that, vomiting.

Wendy took Wilder’s 4-year-old sister, Scout, to mother’s day out while she handled some appointments.

Phil Wray, Wilder’s dad, stayed home with Wilder.

He still didn’t feel well that Thursday evening and slept most of the night while Scout and Phil attended a daddy-daughter dance.

Wilder stayed home from school on Friday.

“He was still drowsy and had no appetite, but was sipping on drinks,” Wendy said. “The stomach bug symptoms continued. At this point, no one else in our home was sick or showing any symptoms, which seemed kind of odd for a stomach bug, but we kept wiping everything down and to keep everything sanitized.”

On Saturday morning, Wilder actually seemed to feel a bit better.

With some predicted cooler weather coming in, the family needed to handle some chores on the farm like putting out hay, checking water and minerals and checking the cattle.

Wilder felt good enough to go along.

“We were away for about four to five hours and he had no stomach bug symptoms other than being a little run down,” Wendy said.

Still, he ate breakfast that morning and had a snack while out doing chores.

“Occasionally, he’d get out and enjoy the sun and fresh air,” Wendy said. “A couple of times he was even running in the pasture.

“We thought he was getting better.”

Then at about 4 p.m., “it was like a wave hit him again.”

The family opted to not go to Dover that evening for the Raider basketball games.

Watching the games online, Wilder soon fell asleep.

“At 9 p.m., I carried him to bed and he didn’t even wake up by being moved,” said his mother.

About 30 minutes after midnight, diarrhea and vomiting struck again and did so about every 30 to 45 minutes until 7 a.m.

Still, nobody else in the family was coming down with anything, so Wendy felt maybe her son had a case of food poisoning.

••• Two other boys in Wilder’s class had turned up sick.

One was a couple days prior to Wilder and the young man was eventually hospitalized for a couple of days.

Another got sick about 10 hours before Wilder started showing his symptoms.

On Sunday afternoon, Nov. 9, Wendy got a message saying the parents of one of the boys had been prompted to take him to the hospital because there was blood in his stool.

With Wilder being 7, he was able to take care of himself in the restroom, so his parents hadn’t checked his stool and he hadn’t mentioned it.

After receiving the message, Wendy went to ask him about it, but he was in the restroom again.

She checked for herself. “Sure enough,” she said. “There was blood.”

They quickly drove to Mercy Hospital Kingfisher’s emergency room where he was placed on an IV while they also got stool and urine samples and provided him some nausea medication.

They were told by Children’s Hospital that Wilder’s labs and status didn’t require a transfer.

The Wrays were sent home with instructions to follow up the next day with their pediatrician.

They tried to rest Sunday night, but after about an 18-hour reprieve, Wilder’s vomiting resumed.

Then they got a call from their pediatrician with extremely alarming news.

“She said his stool culture was back and it showed E. Coli Shigella and to head to Children’s ER,” Wendy said.

“So I packed us a couple of bags for what we thought would be a few days’ stay at the hospital.”

That was more than two weeks ago.

••• The news, nor the situation, didn’t improve at Children’s.

More IV’s, more labs, more samples.

It was later explained to the Wrays that Wilder had Shiga, Toxin E. Coli, also known as STEC. It’s a bacterial infection, but it can’t be treated with antibiotics.

The family was told about a study that needed 1,000 people with Wilder’s specific infection to study and research the best way to treat it.

The treatment is to “hyper hydrate” with IV fluids and monitor the labs.

“So we signed Wilder up,” Wendy said. “Any help we could offer others from being so sick, we wanted to do it.”

Still, the news got worse. Wilder’s STEC had evolved into Hemolytic-uremic syndrome, also known as HUS.

“Which, if you look it up,” Wendy said, “it’s horrifying.”

••• HUS attacks red blood cells and blood vessels in the kidneys and causes failure.

It’s caused by certain strains of E. coli and can lead to long-term health problems.

Early symptoms are diarrhea (often bloody), abdominal pain, fever, nausea and vomiting.

In other words, that was Wilder.

The next several days were no fun for anyone in the Wray family.

Several IVs, including two of them placed by ultrasound.

Countless lab draws, though, thankfully, mostly from his IV access.

Continuous cardiac monitoring.

Bladder scans to check urine retention.

Then a move to ICU where he was on continuous vital monitoring.

IV fluids running with infusion pumps.

Three platelet transfusions.

Four blood transfusions.

Then there was three rounds of dialysis in his ICU, which in itself brought its own set of circumstances.

His kidney function labs became extremely elevated, so he had to be medically paralyzed with a paralytic drip and opioids to keep him comfortable so they could intubate and place a central line catheter for the dialysis.

“We watched him lay still as a machine breathed for him,” Wendy said. “They even talked at one point of keeping him ‘sleeping’ for dialysis because he tends to be anxious and they were worried he may pull out or harm the line.”

••• Maci Bedwell sure has missed having Wilder in class.

“Our classroom has been way too quiet without him,” she said.

But his classmates have been hard at work to let Wilder know they’ve been thinking about him.

“My class specifically has used their extra time all week to make him cards and draw him pictures,” Bedwell said.

The community - to no one’s surprise - rallied around the entire family.

“Pray for Wilder” can be found on a t-shirt or a sticker and worn by just about anyone associated with Lomega.

The hashtag #WildersWarriors can be found across several social media platforms as the community gets updated on his progress.

Several other Lomega classes also prepared getwell cards for Wilder.

And other communities have shown support as well.

When Lomega hosted Calumet in varsity basketball games on Nov. 18, they “passed the hat” for patrons to donate to help with expenses incurred by the Wray family.

More than $4,000 was raised in that one simple gesture.

Perhaps the most special donation came from a young boy from Calumet.

When spectators entered the gym, they were greeted by photos of Wilder and a large sign with the “Pray for Wilder” logo.

The young man asked what was wrong.

When it was explained to him, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his concession stand money - 50 cents - and asked if he could donate it.

“He then said Wilder was his best friend,” Wendy said she was told.

As it turned out, the boys met during the Fourth of July celebration in Kingfisher a few months ago. They played all evening together at the park, then watched the fireworks.

Like Bedwell said, Wilder can make a friend with anyone and any time. His friend wanted to help.

“Just like that, he gave his concession stand money for our sweet, friendly boy,” Wendy said.

Haley Mitchel was a Lomega rival as a player and a coach at Okarche for several years.

Now a teacher and coach at Kingfisher, she had her junior high basketball players prepare cards of encouragement for Wilder.

When Bedwell visited Wilder last Thursday, she had more than 100 cards to deliver to him.

••• The Wrays felt all the love and the prayers.

“We’ve been blessed beyond words,” Wendy said. “Seriously, all we can say is ‘thank you’ and it doesn’t seem like enough.”

The Lomega community has helped Scout to and from her mother’s day out to keep her life as routine as possible.

There have been deliveries of gifts, gift cards, money sent via Venmo, food brought to the hospital and hotel arrangements.

“People have given kindly and generously when we feel so unworthy,” Wendy said.

There have been prayer vigils and verse cards to display in Wilder’s room “to remind him God’s with him everywhere, especially in the dark, scary times.”

••• And no time was darker or scarier than when Wilder had seemed to lose hope and told his mother he didn’t think he’d make it home.

“My heart shattered,” Wendy said. “I had a hole in my stomach and a lump in my throat.”

Holding back her own tears, she asked Wilder why he felt that way.

“I’m really sick and don’t feel good,” he replied.

She remained strong and told him they’d take it moment by moment, but they’d get him home.

“I reminded him that God wrote this story that only he could live and tell,” Wendy said. “We remind him often that God has big plans for him and his sister.”

She got Wilder back into his bed, laid on the foldout couch next to him, held his hand and prayed until she fell asleep.

“The next morning, we made a plan we were going to celebrate every win and work through everything else,” she said.

••• When Wilder was first admitted, doctors and hospital staff talked the Wrays through a number of different possibilities and scenarios.

One dealt with dialysis.

“They said it could be a few treatments to treatments for months and, in some cases, it could be for life,” Wendy said.

The length of the hospital stay varied multiple times depending on the result of this test or this lab.

His parents worried as they sat with him in the hospital as progress seemed faint.

“It initially felt extremely slow watching the decline and watching him everyday looking more swollen from fluid, color depleting from becoming more and more anemic, weaker from not being able to keep anything down or in his system,” Wendy said.

But the prayers persisted. The faith remained strong.

The family stayed focused on the positive, even if Wilder was finding it tough that day in his hospital room.

“If you focus on the good, the wins, the victories for God, then the other things don’t seem so scary,” Wendy said.

And the victories slowly, but surely - started mounting.

“There feels like so many things are going on, so much progress,” Wendy said on Monday.

The potential of months or even a lifetime of dialysis treatments ceased after three.

“After three treatments, he didn’t require anymore,” Wendy said. “So he’s had multiple days of no treatments means his dialysis catheter/central line will come out.”

His breathing continued to improve and by last Friday, he was completely weaned off oxygen support.

On Saturday, he was moved from ICU to a stepdown unit.

On Monday, physical therapy cleared him.

“He’s been up and moving around his room as much as he can,” Wendy said.

And on Tuesday - more than two weeks after being taken to the hospital - Wilder Wray got released to go home.

The Wray family will be together - at home - on Thanksgiving, something that didn’t seem possible even a few days ago.

“At the beginning of last week, that didn’t feel realistic or even an option,” Wendy said. “We’ll be going home on a few meds and have follow-ups with nephrology, but to not need dialysis anymore and not showing any signs of long-term kidney issues is incredible.”

#WildersWarriors came through and Thanksgiving will have some added signifi cance this year in the Lomega community.

So will all the other days, said Wendy: “We all know we aren’t promised tomorrow, but when you’re truly in what feels like a life-threatening situation, I think everyday has a little more meaning now.”