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July 7, 2005
Out of his Coma! July 7, 9 AM
yesterday gloria and i met with dr bilsky, to get a report on asher's present condition and progress. he told us since asher has been talking and cognitively responding that he is no longer considered to be in a coma. Asher is officially awake! Praise and Thanksgiving!
what we really need to be praying about now is that asher will quickly progress to the point of being able to endure 3 to 4 hours of rehab therapy a day. as soon as he gets to this point they will move him to the spinal injury center (he is in the acquired brain injury unit right now).
please also pray for asher's short term memory to be restored. right now he doesn't remember much from day to day that we can tell. part of that is a blessing, though. he doesn't need to remember some things. pain and certain memories of things that have upset him.
the doctor described what his brian is going through right now, in terms of the injuries to it, like trying to drink a glass of water through a straw that has holes in it. when you suck on it only part of the water will ever make it inside your mouth. the same thing is true if you were to try and blow water through the leaky straw. only a portion of the water would make it out the other end. that is how asher's brain is presently functioning. only a portion of information is able to make it to his brian to be stored which also means that only a portion of what is already stored in his brain will be able to make it out.
the good news is, according to the doctor, this is the best kind of brain injury to have in terms of a good outlook for its restoration. because the injuries are scattered all over the brain, due to the violent shaking that occured when he landed from his fall, this is far better than a specific localized injury to the brain. for instance if a brain is injured by a blunt trauma to the head, like from a baseball bat, the part of the brain that was injured from the blow could destroy the function of a whole section of the brain where it was hit. the chances of that part of the brain ever recovering would be slight or none. so, we are again so thankful to God, even for the kind of brain injuries that asher has sustained.
yesterday was a pretty hard day for asher, which means it had its moments for us as well. in the morning asher became pretty upset by an increased awareness of his condition for not being able to move his arms and legs as well as his ablility to communicate better. he was calling himself stupid and retarded and then he would say that he was going to cry and then he would cry, but he wasn't able to shed tears when he cried and that was really heartbreaking for us to not only see, but to also be helpless to do anything about.
later in the morning we also had another reminder of life's temporariness. a woman we had not me before came into asher's room and told us that the back four rooms in the brain injury unit were about to be remodeled which meant that they were going to have to make new room assignments for several of the patients in the unit. asher was one of those patients. we thought we would have a little while to get ready for the move, but the next thing we knew staff was coming in and moving asher into the room next door to him. this was a really hard psychological adjustment, i think, for all of us. perhaps more so for asher since he has become fully aware of his surroundings.
what this change meant was that asher went from a large corner room by himself with 2 large windows and an electric lift suspended from the ceiling to a room with another patient in it and no window on asher's side of the room. he also has to be lifted now with a manual lift on the ground that has to be rolled to move him from his bed to his chair, which happens multiple times a day. since the space is about half the size of his other room this makes for difficult manuvering, particularly since asher has both brain and spinal injuries. i think, right now, he is the only one in the unit with both. everyone else has brain injuries, only. fortunately, God continues to give us a lot of grace in the coping process with what seems to be never ending change. also, with asher's short term memory loss he may not remember too much about where he was yesterday.
asher's new roommate is still in a deep coma. he was, i believe in an automobile accident. please pray for the Lord to bring him out of his coma and restore his mind. gloria and hadrienne got to meet his mother last night. it turns out that he is from savannah, georgia, which is where i am originally from. i know that moving asher into his room is providential. please pray for his mother, too. she is having to stay some distance away from the hospital now, but will be moving, at some point, to the shepherd apts., where we are staying. she has some transportation needs right now, but gloria has told her that she can help her out with that when she moves into the apartments. it continues to amaze me how God works in and through every situation that he puts us in. nothing happens without reason or purpose, rather the fault always lies with us for being either unable, or unwilling to recognize it because it doesn't happen to be according to the way we want things to go. no matter how great our own needs are, there is always someone else that God wants to put in our path whose needs are even greater. it shames me to think how upset we initially were by the suddeness of being moved out of the room where asher was. it is not that we have not been keenly aware of God's purposes being fulfilled every inch of the way since asher was first injured, it is just that our own need to feel secure, no matter how much what we are trying to hold onto is only an illusion of security (and we even realize that), change continues to make us feel so incredibily vulnerable, and even naked. and our response, unfortunately, is to try and find a source to blame our circumstances on, rather than to give thanks that our hope and security is not in a room (or whatever we are clinging to at the time), but in the provider of that room. and i am finding more and more grace to be able to be thankful for those times when these illusions of security are revealed as only being vapors in our lives that have to dissipate in order for our trust in God and the knowledge of His care and concern for us to be increased. but how painful it is to learn this.
i just spoke with gloria on the phone a few minutes ago to get the latest update on asher this morning. i am actually in chattanooga right now. i drove down yesterday afternoon in order to take care of some business here, both personal as well as widows ministry related. when gloria and hadrienne came to the hospital this morning they found a wonderful surprise. the button that had been put over asher's trach hole had been removed and in another 24 hours his trach hole should be almost completely closed up. what this great news means is that asher will now be able to visit other parts of the hospital including a wonderful outside garden area they have. this is absolutely amazing, and i know that it will be incredibly encouraging to asher to be able to leave the brain injury unit, because based on comments he has made to us since he started talking he has felt like he would never be able to leave that unit. it also means that he will be able to spend time with visitors outside of his hospital room. how incredible is that?
actually, incredible is really too tame a word to be able to express what i am feeling about this happening today. we have only been able to see asher in a hospital bed setting for so long, and even though he has been able to be moved around the brain injury unit in a wheel chair, it is still not the same as being able to take him outside and to be able to have the boundaries of his world (and ours with him) expanded a thousand fold. i am just so filled with thanksgiving i can hardly write, so much so that i think i need wind this down for now.
i do want to add, though, that there are now some pictures posted at the bottom of the page under the heading "skate benefit" from the "pink robots never die" skate benefit competition for asher that took place over the 4th of july weekend.
thank you all more than i will ever be able to express for your continued prayers and concern, support (both financial and volunteering), and sharing this need with others. not a day goes by that i don't find out that others are continuing to find out about this and joining in with their prayers as well. back at the emergency room that night when asher was first brought there and i called my mother to tell her that asher had been critically injured and to please call all the widows and ask them to begin praying, i had no idea what a chain reaction of prayer that would be created as a result. the power behind the prayers of widows has been overlooked and underestimated for so long, and that is why i have devoted the last 20 years of my life to pleading their case, both for their needs as well as for their calling, and yet not once in all those years did i ever imagine that me and my family, especially my son right now, would find ourselves in the kind of position we are in now for needing them to be the prayer catylist that has sparked such an outpouring of prayer and concern from around the world on our behalf. it has truly flattened us all with humility.
rejoicing,
andy mendonsa
RECENT PICTURE OF SOME OF THE WIDOWS
WHO ARE PART OF THE WIDOWS HARVEST PRAYER MINISTRY
IN CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE
| By Andy Mendonsa | 9:20 AM
