Prayers...please....

*****UPDATE...August 01, 2008***** I just spoke with my neighbor Mark...Wednesday night they were able to take Betty off the ventilator...since the removal things have been on a slight upswing...Praise the Lord! Betty, has had to have a feeding tube inserted due to overall weakness and a lack of control swallowing due to the ventilator. She has been "whispering" to Mark on and off...and has been more alert the last 24 hours. In fact this morning she told Mark she was "Hungry!"...he said, "she is too weak to eat on her own...but with each passing day she seems to be making slight improvements". It was determined that Betty had another stroke which caused the seizures....from what I gather from Mark, it was not in a compromising area of the brain (but a stroke is never a good thing, but this one isn't the same as her last one)...they are still in ICU...trying to help her stabilize, breath more purely on her own (they have been using the C-Pat? on her occasionally when she becomes too taxed. They are trying all measures to keep from having to put her back on the ventilator. Sometimes, she has trouble breathing which in turn makes her heart rate and resp. rate go way up, so they are trying everything to keep that from continuing. So...praying all things keep heading in the right direction...hopefully, they will be able to move her to a room in the next few days or in about a week...then they will just work really hard to get her "healthy" and "stable" so they can bring her home...where she is terribly missed!

Thank you all for your prayers, comments and concerns....I will update you if I can from my vacation location...if I find out anything new...if I can find an internet hookup in the rain forest!






I love this picture...I post it because my neighbors Betty and Mark need prayers to lift them up over the next coming weeks. I won't go into great details b/c it would take forever, suffice it to say...Betty who is in her mid 50's suffered a stroke a couple of years ago...with some complications as a result of that over the past couple of years. Weekend before last...Betty was in Phoenix w/her husband for a short one night visit to see Mark's brother who has been in a coma for a couple of months (he suffered a massive stroke of the brain stem a couple of months ago...and he is Mark's twin brother)...while there Betty suffered several seizures. She is in a type of coma...with ventilator, pneumonia, kidney malfunctions and other issues, the doctors do not know what lies ahead...as they just take it one day at a time. Please pray that Betty completely recovers from this and that they will soon be home in Texas to rejoin the rest of their family and their precious grandchildren. What they thought was going to be a very brief visit; sadly, has become a very frightening ordeal and lends itself to many, many unknowns. They were planning on a cruise to Alaska in the middle of August, the first really "big" vacation since Betty's stroke...I do so hope and pray that they can postpone this trip only briefly and that they will soon be able to see that dream come to fruition. It just breaks my heart for them...and it does remind me..."to live each day...fully and...to honor HIM every step of the way"!

Thanks to all my prayer buddies and those of you that offer up "well wishes" to my friends.