Until Every Child Knows,
Big Jim
Matt. 19:14
James 1:27
On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 12:54 AM, lyle_vanklompenberg
Hi everyone,
What a roller coaster ride we feel like we have been on with emotions all over the place since all this began 2 ½ weeks ago! After hearing some very difficult news yesterday and passing that along to all of you yesterday, we have some news we are much more excited to share today!
First of all, Michelle woke up this morning and started to get ready for us to leave for her rehabilitation appointment. As she was getting ready in the bathroom, Michelle said, “Lyle, I think I can see better today than I did yesterday!” As you probably remember, Michelle’s stroke had caused her to lose pretty much the entire upper left quadrant of vision in both of her eyes (and much of the lower left quadrant), so she had been unable to see objects above her eye level and to the left. This morning, as Michelle got ready for the day, she was able to see her things in her peripheral where everything had been completely black in the weeks since the stroke. We praise the Lord for that and are so grateful for all of you praying for Michelle’s vision. This already seems like some real improvement, which her very well respected neuro ophthalmologist told her not to expect! J Michelle has been experiencing some “flashes” and “sparkles” on her left side of her vision, and the neurologist wondered if this is just some of her brain settling down from the stroke.
Second of all, our plans have once again gone back to leaving together on Friday for PNG! The advice yesterday from Dr. Voermann, the rehabilitation doctor, was quite disturbing, and we spent a very difficult evening and night trying to sort out if I (Lyle) should go back to PNG to be with our kids, if Michelle should be admitted as an inpatient, if Michelle’s family should come to be with her, etc., etc. None of those options brought a real peace. Since the opinion that Dr. Voermann had shared was much more dire than anything told to us by the neurologist or any of the other medical staff we had talked to, we decided to contact our neurologist and make some contacts with a couple doctors in the United States that we really respected. Dr. Voermann had told us that Michelle should not be walking around, needed to be admitted to the rehabilitation unit for two weeks, and that Michelle was a high risk for restroking. All of this had Michelle even more anxious about me leaving her or not being able to see the kids for two more weeks. All of the advice we received from doctors in the US, one that oversees a major rehabilitation unit in Michigan, and from our neurologist here in Brisbane that has been working with Michelle since the beginning was that Michelle is past the very risky period and should be free to walk around as much as she is up to, does not need to be an inpatient, and should be fine to return to PNG! Due to the type of stroke Michelle had, which was not tied to risk factors such as obesity, oral contraceptives, high cholesterol, etc., she does not have the same risks others have of stroking again because of those factors.
As things stand now, Michelle plans to attend physiotherapy Wednesday morning and Thursday morning, and we hope to be able to get flights to get back to our beautiful children on Friday! Despite some of the harder days we have had (like yesterday), we do know God is in control and is very good to us. We pray we are able to live in light of that on the rougher days as well as the very encouraging days such as today! Thank you for riding this up and down road with us and caring so much. We still have some major decisions to make regarding our long-term plans, and those will need to be sorted out in the weeks again.
Love to you all,
Lyle & Michelle
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