My Brother

Many of you know that in May of 2006 my younger brother, Richard (now 21, 19 at the time), had a serious infection that resulted in three critical brain surgeries including the removal and replacement of a section of his forehead. He spent about 2.5 weeks in ICU and had lots of follow up medical stuff including visits from a home health nurse multiple times a week all summer and a Pic-Line in his heart with antibiotics for two months. Additionally, in February he had several seizures that put him back in the hospital for a few days and resulted in a life time prescription for anti-seizure medication.

I just spoke to my mom, and she told me that my brother had another pretty bad seizure on Thursday night and is currently hospitalized in Lexington, KY. My parents are currently driving from the old hospital in Louisville with his medical records to the one in Lexington so that they can compare MRIs in the hope that they would be able to figure out what's going on. According to my mom, he's pretty out of it. He's also fighting the doctors and nurses with treatments (which is normal, he's pretty feisty and did that back in May, a lot.) His girlfriend is there holding his hand, which I think my mom might be having a harder time with than his illness (not really, but she doesn't think it's very funny to joke about. I like to joke about it, because I'm his big sister and it's my job.)

I ask that you would pray for his healing. That the doctors would figure out what is going on, and why these seizures continue to happen. Pray that my brother would quit fighting it so much and trust the doctors, that he would take his medicine as he's supposed to. Pray for my parents, especially my mom, that they would trust God's hand in this. Pray that this wouldn't put my brother any further behind in college than he already is, or effect his grades or memory of what he's learned this semester. (When he was first hospitalized in May of 2006, he ended up having to drop all the classes he had taken at UofL that semester because he couldn't remember it to complete them. That process took about 7 months though, and they put him through the ringer along the way.) Pray that LCC/UK will be much better at working with his medical condition and making up his course work than UofL was. Pray that he wouldn't feel defeated as a result of this set back, and that he would continue to live life as normal once he's better and that he'll stay in school. Also, pray that both my parent's employers would be understanding of their need to be away from work, and not penalize them for this (They were great in May, providing food vouchers for the hospital cafeteria among other things, so there is no need to worry. But you always worry because you never know). Selfishly, I ask that you would pray for me in this too. My role within my family has always been to be the strong one holding things together in times like this and it kills me that I can't be there. Pray that I would have peace and be able to focus on my life here, which doesn't stop because my brother is sick.