Hello and once again, thank you for your faithful following of Joy’s journey, your prayers for her healing, and your compassion for our family.
After a very intense day of therapy with all three disciplines yesterday, we returned to Allina Abbott Northwestern today for a CT scan and follow up meeting with the neurosurgeon’s nurse practitioner. The nurse practitioner had met with us when Joy was in inpatient rehab and is very kind and compassionate with her, for which we are very thankful. But no matter how hard I try to mentally prepare myself, it still literally, “knocks the wind out of me,” and I struggle to breathe, when I see the massive amount of black space on Joy’s CT where healthy brain tissue used to reside. The technical terms are encephalomalacia and gliosis. And while I am no neurologist, neurosurgeon, or radiologist, I still find myself asking, “How is she even alive and/or not in a vegetative state with so much brain tissue literally gone, not waiting to heal, gone.”
On the one hand it is a testimony to the miraculous healing that has happened so far, and for that we thank God, but at the same time, presents a clear picture of how permanently damaged and altered (without miraculous intervention), Joy’s brain actually is. It was Joy’s first time seeing one of her CT’s and she started to comment, but got frustrated over her aphasia and did not voice whatever she was thinking. It’s something we’ll process later but we took, “the rest of the day off,” to just let her rest, knit, and listen to music.
On a positive note, the nurse practitioner was able to clear most of the remaining exposed internal stitches that were peskily refusing to come out and a patch on Joy’s scalp that I was concerned about is likely just a spot of dermatitis probably irritation from the surgeries but not of concern related to the cranioplasty itself. We also enjoyed another “hand in hand” walk around our block between rain showers yesterday and continue to be thankful for Joy’s physical strength and endurance gains.
So after seeing Joy’s CT, my request for your prayers is simple, continued intercession for miraculous healing of Joy’s brain and brain function by God’s favor, grace, and mercy. As always, we cannot thank you enough for holding Joy and our family up in your thoughts and prayers, we are certainly in a marathon and I pray that you will endure with us in this very long race.