Re-learning to walk before he can run

Today was pretty quiet, until it was crazy. Lol. That’s how it works a lot of days around here. First, we both had a good night’s sleep, praise God for that! Then, this morning we met with a Dr to talk about David’s sodium. His levels are low and they are concerned that after the surgery, his brain might be misfiring to his kidneys, making his kidneys believe they have enough, so they stop absorbing the sodium. Because of this, they are trying get David a little dehydrated, basically to shock his system into working again… (If I understood it all correctly). Anyways, he’s on a liquid restriction and can’t drink a whole lot during the day. This has been extremely frustrating for him, because he likes to drink a ton of water. Once they start seeing his numbers go up, they will slowly raise how much he can drink in a day. They don’t want it to shoot up too quickly, because that will cause swelling in his head and we obviously don’t need that right now.
He got his drain removed from his head today. Healing looks good for that, so far.

A speech therapist came in to assess his speech and how well his brain was working. After doing some things (some of which, I would even have a hard time doing) she determined that he has some mild brain delay on some things. She gave him some things to work on but doesn’t think he will need therapy outside the hospital for it, so that’s great news!

David basically had two big things on the schedule for today. PT and Radiation. Of course, both came at the same time for him. I’m a little bummed about this, because I really wanted to have a good conversation with PT, seeing that they are the main ones who are going to determine when David is ready to be discharged. They aren’t really going to be around on the weekend, so our conversation will have to wait til Monday. They did a quick assessment on David before he got transported for his radiation treatment. They were super impressed with how well he was doing. They were expecting much worse. (I’m telling you, people keep saying that about him! God’s powerful hand at work!) In our very quick conversation, she does suspect he will need further, intense therapy after leaving the hospital. This may be with him being in a Physical therapy rehab center. We want David to come home, but not at the detriment to his own safety and health. So the one good thing about this quick assessment is now David has all weekend to work on getting his strength and mobility up and then they can be super impressed on Monday!
Radiation went well today and they confirmed that they will be doing another session tomorrow, early morning.

David continues to work super hard on his mobility on his left hand. He doesn’t take the easy way out, and just not use it. Every opportunity he has, he’s trying to get it back to normal, and it shows! He’s made so much progress… This man of mine. He’s such a fighter and he’s amazing! Also, his speech is starting to sound a little better too. It’s definitely worse when he’s tired, but I could see improvements today with that as well.

After coming back from radiation, David was able to get in a much needed nap, and then had the most wonderful time seeing our kids!! He misses them every day and it meant so much to him to be able to see them! Both our hearts are still so full from their visit!!
Prayer requests:

• For David’s sodium to level out and he won’t need any more intervention with it
• For the swelling to continue to go down in his head
• For his brain to start processing things correctly and for David to be patient while we work on it.
• For continued strengthening of his mobility and improvement on his speech.
• For the radiation to shrink the tumors on his spine, so he can have some relief from his pain.
• For complete healing of David’s body.
• For favorable test results
• For our sweet children, who just want their mommy and daddy to come home.
• For those taking care of our kids, to be renewed daily with joy, strength and patience.
• For our amazing medical team, who constantly show us how devoted they are to helping David. They truly do care about trying to get him as healthy as possible. It isn’t just a job to them. They genuinely care SO much.
• Thanksgiving for rest, friends who visit (whether in person or by phone) and the encouraging words they share, the progress David shows and how he is constantly surprising everyone with how well he is doing, despite this horrible circumstance that he’s in.

Every day I come on Facebook and every day I am blown away by the love you all show us. It means SO much to us that you would take time to leave encouraging notes and share our story. Your support is overwhelming and there’s many times a day we could feel overwhelmed by other things, and instead God uses you guys to love on us. THANK YOU.