Why We Were Silent Last Week (Part II)

Yesterday I gave the first installment of a series explaining our absence from "the Blogosphere" last week.  Today is Part II, but you can Click Here to read the first installment of the series.

In the photo below, my wife's face is blue.  Although she was definitely feeling blue, she told me that she wanted absolutely no hospital photos in the blog.  I cheated a bit by coloring in her face.  I hope she doesn't mind.

So to pick up where we left off yesterday...  As the hours passed in the ICU, and despite numerous antibiotics and antifungals, Tricia's condition wasn't improving. They put in a PICC line to give her meds.  One of our ICU nurses told us she had never seen someone pumped with so many antibiotics.  They even pulled out the "big gun," amphotericin, an antibiotic nicknamed ampho-terrible because of its side effects. Her lung xrays were getting worse and they scheduled a bronchial lavage in which they went into her lungs with a scope and took a fluid sample to send for testing.  What was causing this infection?

Numerous tests were run on her blood.  Every test (to this date) has come back negative. They tested all bacteria that she could have picked up from cows, goats, chickens.  They tested for leukemia, autoimmune disease, and rare infections that the infectious disease unit brainstormed.  Due to all the fluids pushed on her, Tricia began to swell.

Over night, she became very restless.  She was struggling to breathe and it was making her heart rate increase, and her pulse oximeter decrease.  Her blood pressure began to fall and they started giving her albumin.  Finally, in the morning, they asked me to leave the room and they intubated her.  They put her on a ventilator so that her breathing wasn't labored.  The machine was doing the breathing for her.  They put in a feeding tube to give her nutrition.

Although she could no longer talk, she would motion for a pen and would communicate to me on a napkin.  We like to pray the Psalms, so she requested the following and I read them to her:

The doctors kept coming in and out of the room and I could see the concern on their faces. The doctor told me, "I hate fighting an enemy that I don't know."  Things were not going well and for the first time, I began to think about things that I didn't want to address.  Our daughter was on a mission trip in South Africa and that was a full 2 day flight to get back home.  Finally, I walked out of the room and asked the nurse to shoot straight with me.  "Do I need to call my daughter back home?"  She paused and said, "You are asking me a hard question.  Right at this moment, I would say that it is not a life or death situation, but a lot can change in two days.  I can't predict where we might be in 2 days."  I called my daughter and she arranged to come home as quickly as possible.  Things looked bleak.

The ICU waiting room was full of family, friends, and church members all praying. I went to the waiting room and we all knelt, held hands and prayed.  Prayer Warrior friends were fervently lifting Tricia up to our LORD.

Late that night I would hold her hand and pray with her and tell her I loved her.  I read Psalm 27 to her.  The last verse in that Psalm, verse 14 says,

Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.

I told her, "That's what we're going to do.  We are going to wait on Him."  The next morning the team of doctors met with us and looked at a curious rash on her stomach and thighs.  They took pictures of the rash.  In hopes of providing clues, they asked the ICU nurse to give her a shot of morphine and they would be back in a couple of hours to take a biopsy.  They showed back up, lifted Tricia's gown... And the rash was gone!

They looked all over and the rash that was there was all gone.  The doctors were dumbfounded!  He looked at me and said, "Someone in this room is going to have to pay for this biopsy tray, because I already opened it!"  Tricia's breathing was a little better and they were able to move her ventilator to 40%.  The doctor said, "Girl, you are getting better. It is going to take a while, but you are going to get better!"  Tricia smiled with her eyes that were filled with tears - tears of joy and relief this time.

The doctors left the room saying, "I don't know what just happened there."  I looked at her and said, "I do. God just happened!"  We prayed, thanking Him for His Goodness.  I said, "Tricia, you are going to make it.  We're going to be able to walk around the yard and smell the magnolia blossoms again.  We're going to be able to have coffee in the rocking chairs on the front porch again!"  She motioned for the pen and wrote the following:

Tricia loves fresh-squeezed tangerine juice from our fruit trees!  I was getting my wife back!  The change in one day was unimaginable!  In a couple days, she was released from the ICU and a couple days later, she was discharged from the hospital.  She still has a fever (on Wednesday, it will mark 3 weeks straight that she has had a fever every day) and has lost a lot of weight and is very weak, but she is getting better every day and I know she will recover.  The doctors still don't know what caused this.  There are lots of mysteries about this illness, but there is one thing I do know.  Our God is an awesome God.  God is our Healer and I KNOW he answers prayers and is still in the miracle business.  I witnessed it with my own eyes.