A New Edition of Facebook Updates

The day was so long yesterday that this update comes as the morning light of Monday creeps into John's room with a little boy who is doing far better than he has since Friday evening.

7am Our morning started a bit before 1a when John's hemoglobin dipped to 9, thankfully he remained nicely pink and brown and warm and comfortable. More blood, more plasma and now we start again with a hemoglobin of 10 and wait. Lord have mercy and direct the doctors minds and hands to resolve this.

The doctors chose to try and bring this under control by scoping John and trying to force the bleeding to clot and shut off.

2pm ‎2.5 hours of scoping later the amazing medical team has removed a clot that was trying to fill his stomach and found the bleeder at his anastomosis and cauterized it. There is a rough patch where the suspected ulcer was but it is not an ulcer just a rough spot and it was not the source of the bleeding. So now we wait again if John can remain stable for 48 hours it will be time to start getting him off the vent, waking him up and letting him get on with life. If not it will be time to scope him again and repeat this process again. So we wait, we hope and we pray and we thank God for amazing doctors and medical staff and that ever present safety net!

6pm I wrote - About 2 hours after the last update John started bleeding again. They scoped him again and couldn't get the bleeding stopped. They have tanked him up on blood products and his vitals are still ok. They are going to take him in for angioplasty to try and shut off the bleeding that way. It has more risks, but we pray that this will fix this. The last alternative is surgery, and while that could fix it, they are reluctant to go there unless absolutely necessary.

8pm We are waiting in John's empty room. Pastor Schmitt brought us the Lord's Supper and God's Word 'be not afraid' and yet we find that fear is very very close.

8:30pm The nurse came by to tell us that John will be up in 15-20 minutes, that they believe they have the bleeding stopped. I'll update again when John is here and settled in.

10pm I wrote - John has returned to the room. He is looking very much like a meatball amongst spaghetti. As we watch the monitors as the nurses clean him up and get the tangles out of all the lines we see heart rate and blood pressures that are right where they should be and the angioplasty team told us as soon as they got the coil into place they were able to stop pushing blood in to keep his BP up.

11pm So we close out the night with a little boy who is nicely pink brown and warm, who has been washed up, kissed and cuddled and spoken too as much as we are able and a capable nurse who is watching over him and had promised to call if he appears to still be losing blood. We will certainly admit that we have a very large portion of paranoia but also that we continue to pray Lord have mercy and attempt to sleep.

Pastor Schmitt was a great help and comfort to us here in our time of need bringing God's Word for our ears and delivering His promises to us into our hands and mouths.

There is also a great blessing that we receive from those who are not present with us physically. John is being prayed for around the world and we are being encouraged and helped in so many ways even beyond our understanding. I especially want to thank the people of the two congregations I serve, Peace Lutheran and St. Paul's Lutheran in Slater and Saline City Missouri. They are an incredible group of faithful and loving Christians who have blessed us in ways that are so needed. We thank God for all of you, and pray for His blessings upon you.