February 8, 2024

TL;DR
Evidence indicates the infection Maggie has been fighting is gone. Pray it stays away and others that can develop during a hospital stay, stay away.
Her pressure continues to stay in a normal, safe rage. Pray the swelling continues to decrease for her overall health, but also so we can get an MRI.
They need an MRI to determine injury to her brain and brain stem. It will help guide the medical staff in her treatment and recovery. Pray the Lord heals injury to both her brain and brain stem completely.
Her reflexes have been returning intermittently. Things are progressing positively.
The doctors this morning confirmed that we are “through the sprint and beginning the marathon”.
Bless the Lord, He has been so good!
Lis and I are starting to plan for how the foreseeable future looks balancing the care for Maggie here and our family and job and ministry in Birmingham. Pray for wisdom and grace as we plan.
Thank you all so, so much! For your prayers, for sharing Maggie’s story, for your direct support to us mentally, spiritually, emotionally, financially. We are blessed beyond what we deserve.

Everything changed a week ago.

I’ve used the phrase “everything changed” before. In context it was very likely true. But this context is a whole new level.

In just a few hours it will be one week from when a nurse in the ER heard Lisa talking to me. She asked if I was Maggie’s father and she she heard that I was she told Lisa that I needed to get the hospital.

I was on the earliest flight I could find out of Birmingham to Rochester.

That was the most valuable 3 hours of sleep I’ve ever had because of the energy I would need from it of the next week.

The flights from Birmingham to Atlanta and from Atlanta to Rochester were the shortest feeling flights I’ve ever been on. The layover in Atlanta however was the longest feel layover I’ve ever had.

Right before the plane took off, I had to know. As soon as the plane landed, I had to know. The doctors had worried Maggie’s brain may have herniated and injury her brain stem. They were worried some cost-benefit of her treatment could have had negative effect as well.

Every time I asked Lisa how things were, what I was really asking was, “Is Maggie still alive?”

I couldn’t say the words. But I think Lisa knew. But I don’t think Lis could answer with those terms just like I couldn’t ask with them.

All weekend we stared at two purple numbers on a medical monitor. There were plenty of numbers to worry about. But it was those two in those moments that meant everything.

There was a brilliant team of doctors working around her, including an infectious disease team that were trying to identify the bacteria causing the infection that was the source of the swelling in her brain.

But it was those two numbers that mattered most. They would decrease and we would simultaneously rejoice and exhale. They would increase and we would hold our breath.

We describe things as a roller coaster. That’s the best I’ve got. But I’ve never looked at a roller coaster that had this much tumult much less ridden one.

There were positive signs over the weekend. But there were concerning ones. The doctors were always realistic. But I’ll admit that add personal preference and emotion to the scale and had it tipped pretty far one way. To which I would never blame anyone. (Especially since I did it myself.) But Monday came. And Sunday had been a really bad night. When I woke up on Monday, the PA asked me to have LIsa come over to the hospital so we could talk about Sunday night. And they very professionally and very compassionately but very honestly prepared us that we may have already lost her.

We asked if there was a chance she was still there. The numbers they used were less than 10%, single digits.

We asked if one more day to fight, to look for any improvement would be unreasonable. They told us she would be comfortable, she wouldn’t be in pain no matter what next steps we took. But even the tests they could do to measure brain functions may take days to confirm while the sedation she was on weaned off. We talked to some friends who are doctors to ask questions in a more personal way regarding their thoughts on the prognosis, ask them about one more day to fight if another day to fight would be reasonable or, frankly, if we were looking for false hope.

Questions you never want to have to consider. But here we were.

I remember standing across from Lisa over Maggie’s hospital bed begging God for our daughter. Begging for her life. Begging for her soul.

They said one more day wouldn’t be unreasonable to fight at all. We asked for the day. And we asked for the family of faith to storm the throne of Heaven with prayer.

I remember where I was sitting in Maggie’s hospital room - Lisa and I were just trying to process what all had happened - when our PA Jeanette caught my eye to step out in the hospital room. Her not having come into the room, I was expecting the worst. She told me they wanted to use a test looking for blood flow in the brain stem. If there was blood flow, they fight as hard as they can. If not, essentially we are looking at that long wait with a dire outlook.

There was blood flow.

And they meant what they said.

Before I know it a neurosurgeon is talking to us about a procedure he labels some of the “wacky $#*!” they do. They place a cranial hinge in her head that allows for the swelling while her body fights the infection. But the time we go to bed that night the hinge is in place at that purple number that has ruled our life is consistently better than we have seen in days. Even the spikes that are occurring then are in the range that made us happy. And to bring the number down they only had to use the drain for relief that was constant before that morning.

How quickly your life can change.

Tuesday and Wednesday didn’t seem to correlate with the way things were when we woke up on Monday morning. I was so relieved. But I almost didn’t know ... maybe it was adrenaline, maybe it was shock. I almost felt in a daze.

But Monday night and Tuesday night were status quo for where she is in recovery. We almost weren’t sure if it was okay, but neither of us stayed in the hospital overnight last night. And today felt, for what it will look like through this season, it felt okay.

We woke up. We got ready. We went to breakfast. We came to the hospital and visited Maggie. We spent time with family and friends here. We went to lunch. We came back to the hospital. Visited some more. Now we are starting to talk about dinner. We will come back by the room to see her. But we won’t sleep in the room tonight either.

We have a new normal now. And it will be this way for a while. Even a week ago now we would have never imagined this was it. But it is a gift we never realized how thankful we would be.

This morning during rounds with the doctors things, like on Tuesday and Wednesday, seemed to continue to be trending positive. More recovery and long term plan than the crisis they had been the days before. I told them Lis and I had been talking about me potentially flying home tomorrow to be with Seth and Bekah. They said that wouldn’t be a problem and said we have “moved from the sprint into the marathon”.

A little while after that I prayed one of the more complicated prayers I remember. Lisa was taking some friends to the airport and the family wasn’t quite here yet. And I found myself just walking around the room.

I told the Lord I wasn’t going to barter. And I rode the pendulum from wanting to go full “name it claim” it to “I don’t deserve to ask anything” just because of how much He’d already done for us. But I told Him how so often I feel like the Prodigal Son and how when He sees us, He will come to us. And so I was going to ask. I just started point at pictures of Maggie in the room and started asking for these specific “versions” of Maggie back, that I was praying for that measure of healing.

Later into the morning Grace was visiting Maggie and she goes to just touch Maggie’s arm to let her know she was there for her. Grace had been drinking Starbucks and her hands were cold. Maggie flinched.

We have been looking for a few different signs of response - cough, pain response, and pupil response. There has been intermittent cough since yesterday, but she hasn’t had pain response since Friday. The cold response is similar to pain response; they tested pain response and it was there.

The Lord is good.

It’s impossible to not get excited for these things. But I also found myself too excited too soon less than a week ago. So I’m trying my best to react. But then it was a sprint and now it is a marathon, and I much rather be on this journey than where I started this week.

Pray.

I appreciate and thank the Lord for wisdom and knowledge; the medical staff’s application of it has been amazing.

But I believe where we are today - the right diagnosis of Maggie last Thursday, sustaining her this weekend, what I believe was a true miracle on Monday, the responses she’s had the last few days - I believe they are because of prayer.

Bless the Lord for His faithfulness. He has been so good to Maggie. He has been so good to Lis and I, to Seth and Bekah. He has been so good to mom and Meg and our family.

Thank you. These are still some of the emotions I still can’t quite process, and this is nowhere near adequate. But here are SO many of you to thank. We have been sustained by the Lord and through you all’s prayers, encouragement, calls, texts, posts. So many have shared Maggie’s story, told stories or memories how amazing she is, asked for prayer and so on. You all are gifts to us.

So much credit and kudos to the medical staff here. For their medical knowledge and its application. But also their support of us. They have been incredible.

We still need miracles. We don’t know the extent of the damage to her brain stem. Blood flow, reflexes, they are the signs we need. But there are no guarantees. And to the degree she recovers, there is no way to know right now how long that journey will be. But God has been faithful and He is still good.

The infection seems under control. But pray that is the last we have seen of that awful thing. Also pray that other infections that can develop in hospitals are avoided. Pray the swelling of her brain continues to go down. We need an MRI to better gauge the injury to her brain and brain stem. But that swelling has to decrease to get that image. Pray any of that injury is healed. The Lord has given us amazing bodies and Maggie is young, her brain is young, and we continue to hear how her brain can heal or rewire. Praise God. But I am praying and believing for my daughter who left home on break to come home, for her sake not mine.

Again, thank you all. And again, bless the Lord for all He has done. He is good.

Originally posted by Nick to Facebook on Feb 08, 2024 5:16:52 pm