Dear friends,
First the good news – in our doctor’s appointment today, the doctor looked at the results of the MRI/MRA done last night to see if there was need to be concerned about the blood vessel in her brain that seemed to still be spasming when the first MRI was done last week. While he did not think the vessel was necessarily back to normal, he had less concern that anything would happen with it. Part of the comfort he had about it was the passage of time without any major problems. With each week that passes from the time Michelle originally had her stroke, the doctor said he would be more and more confident that Michelle wouldn’t be having another stroke.
Now the news we were not wanting – we are not able to fly home yet tomorrow. After looking at the MRI/MRA results, hearing from Michelle on the status of her symptoms, and seeing some of the limitations Michelle has noticed more since being out of the hospital, the doctor thought Michelle would benefit greatly from spending some time in a rehabilitation unit with occupational therapists. We are still waiting to hear from them on how long Michelle would need to do it, whether she would need to be inpatient or could be outpatient, etc., so we don’t have firm plans yet. I will have to say we were absolutely crushed to think of spending longer before we get to go home to the kids. They are being loved to death, but I think we are struggling more without them than they are without us. We asked a lot of questions about how much this occupational therapy would be able to accomplish and whether it could wait until later, but everyone was pretty emphatic that the closer to the time of the stroke the therapy is done the better. It didn’t make it any easier to deal with. We also wished we could have been working on this more intense therapy this past week instead of waiting until now to go that route.
The doctor also asked our plans for things long-term and shared with us his perspective. Bottom line, he is not able to give us any percentages or guarantees about how likely Michelle is to have another migraine or stroke, but he is strongly encouraging us to consider returning to the US even before we are scheduled to in June. We have talked and prayed a lot about things…what is prudent medically without losing sight of the fact that God is completely in control and able to sustain us no matter where we would be.
For now, we have cancelled our tickets yet again. We are hoping the rehabilitation unit is able to fit Michelle in tomorrow and then to be treated as an outpatient for part of next week. We probably don’t know that is feasible yet. Please pray these plans come together, for healing for Michelle, and that we will be able to get home soon. While we know it isn’t really feasible to have the kids here with all that is going on and these days away are not that big of a deal if they help Michelle’s prognosis for years to come, I think being away from our kids is the hardest part for both Michelle and I of being here.
Thanks for standing with us through this entire ordeal. There certainly are a lot of curve balls and unanticipated changes along the way. We pray we will be able to maintain a good testimony through it all.
Love,
Lyle & Michelle
No comments:
Post a Comment