Friday Findings

Chrissie's rash is a break-out of shingles.  Poor baby girl.  It's covering her entire right arm and wrist and hand, plus there's an outbreak on the back of her right shoulder.  Shingles is a version of the varicella virus (Chicken Pox), which can break out in times of stress.  We all know that Chrissie's been under extreme stress.  Please pray for this shingles outbreak to clear up FAST and that it won't be bothersome to Chrissie.  Right now Chrissie is sedated enough to where it's not extremely bothersome for her, but I'm thinking that might have been the reason for her 2.5 hour episode of being in pain and uncomfortable the other day.  Poor baby girl!  They've started Chrissie on some kind of medicine to help treat shingles, but it wasn't started within the first 72 hours of outbreak, per recommendation of the medicine and its effectiveness, so not sure if it will be helpful or not. 

The doctors are still pushing for the MRI, but the radiology team is declining their request because of the pacemaker leads that are inside of Chrissie's heart, which are stainless steel and may heat up during an MRI.  The debate is continuing between the doctors and radiology.  Please pray for God's will to be done.  We don't care about the MRI; it's the doctors and their curiosity (obsession) with being able to see what damage has been done neurologically with all of Chrissie's crashes and episodes she's been through.  Everyone who has worked with Chrissie is just dying to see the results of a brain MRI!!!

Keep praying for Chrissie's lungs.  They're improving, but still have a long way to go.  They've been trying to reduce the amount of ventilator support, but Chrissie is in a holding pattern now.  If they go down below a certain level of support, her oxygen drops too low, which means she's not getting any closer to getting off the ventilator.

Another prayer request is something much less exciting:  hot water!  The hospital's boiler broke, as did the back-up boiler, so there is no hot (or even slightly warm!) water in the hospital, nor is there any heat.  (Chrissie's room already felt like the arctic!)  The boiler's been out for 3 days now, which means I am really craving a warm shower!!!  I will get to take one tomorrow at our camper, but I don't want to leave Chrissie alone so I can go off-site and shower.  I've done a cold shower, but don't care to do that again!!!  UGH!  The hospital is using their neighboring hospital's facilities for sterilizing and other necessities, but there's still no hot water to the sinks or showers here and they're not sure when they'll get it all figured out.  The nurse today said it would be a couple of months to get the boiler fixed, but they're trying to borrow another boiler in the meantime or something like that.  I'm sure the hosptial administrators and staff are much more inconvenienced than I, so I have a feeling they'll figure out something before too long.

Thank you for praying and encouraging and supporting us!