W OODLAND — Under the daily grind of caring for a child with a disability, some marriages crack and split in two. Not so with Mike and Loree Patnode. For nearly 11 years, the Woodland couple has teamed up to provide 24-hour-a-day care for their son, Albert Jacob — “AJ.” — who is bedridden and can’t talk.

They sleep in shifts. Mike takes nights, Loree covers days. They see each other for brief spans of time in between, often communicating through Post-It Notes.

“Loree: You are my best half. I love you so much. Mike,” reads one note stuck on a kitchen cabinet.

In 1997, at 25 weeks into their first pregnancy, the couple learned their first child would be born with defects including scoliosis (a curvature of the spine) and arthrogryposis, which limits a joint’s range of motion. The scoliosis makes it hard for AJ to breathe, and he can’t move enough to circulate normal bodily fluids.

After his birth, AJ spent several months at Legacy Emanuel Hospital in Portland, and doctors gave him little chance to see his first birthday.

“There was a lot of … ‘Don’t hold onto him. Don’t think long term.’ And here he is almost 11,” Loree Patnode, 41, said in an interview earlier this month.

“The doctors just kind of shrug their shoulders,” added Mike, 43.

The Patnodes rebuffed doctors’ advice to institutionalize AJ— though they didn’t have a clue on how to care for him.

“It was pretty spooky, like that roller coaster ride as it begins to tip over the edge,” Mike said.

Mike, who was planning to go back to college to finish his master’s degree in art and photography, decided to stay at home. Loree quit her job as a buyer at an import store. The couple live on a small disability income for Mike’s congenital heart condition and federal disability payments for AJ.

AJ is front and center in the family’s living room, his quarters since coming home from the hospital in 2000. With tousled blond locks and a cherubic face, he looks small reclining on the bed, even though he’s nearly 4 feet tall. The skin of his arm is as soft a newborn baby’s. Every now and then, he makes an “uh” sound. His eyes focus on a television screen next to the bed. When his parents want his attention, they catch his eyes by gently waving a hand in front of his face.

His hips are dislocated from the scoliosis, making sitting upright painful.

“Sometimes, we have to kind of push through,” Loree said. “He just had a dentist appointment, and I think he was up for about an hour and 15 minutes in his chair.”

Watching your child in pain is a knife through the heart, Loree said.

“He had one year where he was just in pain the whole year,” Loree said. “There was hardly anything we could do to keep him comfortable. It was not fun watching him go through that.”

AJ was able to use a wheelchair to go to school for about four years, but as he is bedridden, school comes to him. A tutor visits him for an hour each school day for his lessons.

A computerized machine called a “Springboard” allows him to choose phrases the Springboard “speaks” on his behalf. He can ask his mom to come sit at his bedside, ask “what’s that?” or use such as “happy” or “excited” to express emotions.

On the ceiling above his bed are his toys — strobe lights AJ also controls with the use of a switch. He’s surrounded by evidence of the family’s Catholic faith — statues of the Madonna and a poster of Jesus that reads, “I trust in you.”

A steady drone of medical equipment fills the room. One pumps air into AJ’s lungs through a tracheotomy tube. Another shakes his upper body periodically to keep mucous from building up in his lungs and sending him to the hospital.

Caring for AJ has dominated the Patnodes marriage.

“We got married on a Thursday and we said, ‘Oh, we should have every Thursday be our date Thursday,’ ” Loree said. “We’ve had a handful of dates we’ve been on. We’ve got to work on it.”

The fear that something would go wrong in AJ’s care keep the couple from leaving his side for any amount of time. When their 12th wedding anniversary rolled around recently, though, “I said, ‘We’re going away for our anniversary,’ ” Loree said.

“I wouldn’t go farther than Portland,” she said. “We could be back from Portland in half an hour. The ocean is two hours away, and that’s too far.”

The family also includes two younger daughters, Elisabeth and Katharine, 6 and 8. People who know their schedule marvel the Patnodes had time to have more children.

“It’s called the birds and the bees,” Loree said, smiling. “And if you ask our nurses, they will swear it was immaculate conception.”

As the girls grow older, being able to take them out for family time gets more important, Loree said. On a recent day, they took their daughters to see a Christmas movie and to a restaurant, leaving AJ with respite care nurses.

“It’s hard, because there is one member of our family who can’t be there,” she said.

“We feel like there is this empty spot when we go do an activity with the girls,” Mike echoed. “For Loree and I, it’s always a hurdle. Here’s this fun thing, and how do we share it with him?”

Sometimes people wonder how they can have hopes or goals for AJ.

“I have hopes,” Loree said. “For the girls, it might be a little easier to help formulate what their wishes and desires are. With AJ, it’s a little trickier.”

Because they sacrificed their livelihoods to care for AJ, they might be down to a very small income one day.

“I’m not going to have Social Security when I’m old, I’m not going to have any of that,” Loree said. “I’m going to be a little old granny working at Safeway bagging groceries. Who knows what I’ll be doing.”

Loree said she believes the care AJ has received at home helped him live past doctors’ grim prognosis. AJ has outlived all expectations, but one day — no one knows when — the scoliosis will make it impossible for him to breathe. The couple is just thankful that they’ve had him 11 years and counting, said Mike, remembering the moment doctors broke the bad news about their unborn child.

“Within hours of realizing there was a problem, our biggest hope was, can we just hold him for a while?” Mike said.

Loree said she made a decision to put her faith in God and in her child.

“I believed in AJ,” she said.

They have no regrets.

“I had another doctor who said, when AJ was several months old, ‘Why don’t you just pull this (breathing) tube off? Let him go. It would be easier on him, it would be easier on you. How are you going to go about your career, all these things? Because that’s what people do,’ ” Mike said.

He shook his head.

“I sat there. I don’t care about what car I drive. That’s a material thing,” he said. “The adventures that I get to have with this child are more intimate than the adventures that I’m going to have in a fancy car, or a fancy career. I enjoy art and photography, but they don’t give me the kind of depth that a human relationship does.”

AJ’s grandmother, Charlene Patnode, administrates the AJ Patnode Fund, which benefits AJ and his family.

Donations for the fund can be sent to: AJ Patnode Fund, 334 Island Air Drive, Woodland, WA 98674.

To find out more about AJ and his progress, visit www.ajpatnode.com