Please pray boldly for:
Michelle's eye to heal
a great prognosis and for all to see God.
That Lyle and Michelle would be able to stay in PNG
Wisdom and discernment as they seek the Lord in this seemingly impossible situation.
Pray as Daniel looking to the Lord for an answer!
Until Every Child Knows,
Big Jim
Matt. 19:14
James 1:27
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On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 7:39 AM, lyle_vanklompenberg
Dear friends,
Today was Michelle’s 2nd day of physiotherapy at the rehabilitation center at the hospital, and she was able to meet with an occupational therapist and a rehabilitation doctor. She started off with the occupational therapist, and it was tremendously encouraging to see all of the things that Michelle CAN do that are potentially problems for folks that have had strokes. David, the occupational therapist, did numerous tests of Michelle’s vision, perception skills, fine motor skills, and different thinking skills. Most of the tests Michelle scored extremely well, and all of the limitations the therapist saw were things we were aware of. He was very optimistic about Michelle’s prospects of having significant recovery on a number of these current limitations. Next, Michelle was with the physiotherapist who ran her through some exercises to help her walking and balance based on her session with Michelle on Friday. All that went quite well, and Michelle was even able to jog a little bit in the hallway.
The last person we met with at the end of our morning was the rehabilitation doctor. As had been the case in each of our meetings with doctors recently, this resulted in another twist. This doctor’s opinion was that it was foolish for Michelle to even do the amount of walking we had been doing around town here. While we thought we were doing a good thing to work on Michelle’s walking skills (and were seeing some good improvement), we evidently were doing something the doctor did not think was wise. Everyone had told us the first month after the stroke was so key, and this was the time to retrain your brain to pick up for cells that died during the stroke. The rehabilitation doctor said he would definitely not suggest Michelle go anywhere for a couple weeks. He much preferred that she be admitted to their rehabilitation unit for two weeks to allow more time to pass from the time of her stroke and to give them the ability to allow her to heal but to also channel her activities just to the rehabilitation activities they guided. We left the doctor after an hour long meeting with the idea we are supposed to tell them tomorrow what we are going to do – go back to PNG against his advice or be admitted to the rehabilitation unit of the hospital here.
Needless to say, this was actually much more difficult than what we were braced to hear today. The thought of just staying down here and being away from our kids for a total of a month seems terrible to both of us. We have kicked around many ideas and haven’t decided what to do. We have had some gracious offers by friends to come be with Michelle and allow me to return to the kids soon. We have had offers by friends to bring our kids down to us. All of the options have some huge down sides – having our family apart, the massive costs, logistics of places to stay with the kids, etc. Please pray with us as we try to sort something out in the next little while. Please continue to pray for Michelle – both for her medical condition and also for the difficulty of being down here away from her family and about to be back in the hospital. Today involved a lot of tears. While there are no certainties of whether Michelle would stroke again or not, the doctor feels the next couple weeks are imperative to allow her brain to heal and to get past the riskiest time. I know I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I brought her back to PNG, and she had a stroke in the next couple weeks.
If you haven’t picked it up yet, we are really struggling right now to decide exactly what to do. While we both feel there is not much else we can do but to follow the doctor’s suggestion for Michelle to be admitted to the rehabilitation unit (probably tomorrow), we are battling a lot of emotions about us being away from our kids, me not being by Michelle’s side, etc. We are not expecting anyone to write back with a simple solution, but we wanted to update you on where we are at and ask for your prayers as we sort through this additional turn of events. While we are looking at an additional two weeks now, we worry that date could also get pushed back as our other potential departure dates were.
Thank you all for the amazing prayer and financial support to us through all of this!!
Love,
Lyle for Michelle too
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