Once again, thank you so much for your continued prayers. We are so grateful to be blessed with so many people who take their precious time to, not only, pray for us, but ask others to pray for us!! On the last update I said Lucy would be having her MRI on the 19th, which is tomorrow. Well, the hospital messed up again and had us scheduled for the 13th. They called me on the 12th to discuss anesthesia protocol, etc. I was quite shocked to learn of the scheduling mess up, they doubled checked and she was only down for the 13th, not the 19th. I had to cancel the appointment as we had things going on the next day, Shanti had to work, we didn’t have my mom lined up to help out, I was not prepared with the food you need when going into a fast etc. AND I was not emotionally prepared, for one week sure, but one day, no!
This appointment was set up by the TMJ specialist’s office, the only Dr. we have consulted with on this surgery. If you remember the orders were thoroughly messed up with her CT scan. This is one of two things: either God is trying to tell us to get a second opinion sooner rather than later or this is the best guy for the job and satan is trying to mess it up. Well, we have decided to seek another opinion before moving forward with a MRI. Because of Lucy’s inability to open her mouth the MRI is more complicated than with another child. They reassured me that they do nasal intubations regularly (almost daily) but because she can’t open her mouth they would have to have a crash cart in the room, just in case. Having weighed this, we decided it would be best to seek the second opinions first as the other doctors may see the MRI as an unnecessary step.
In the meantime, I see this as more time to pray for her healing. I know God designed the body so wonderfully. I have been praying that whatever miscommunication happened in her little body, to result in this extra bone/tissue growth, be resolved and that every nerve, cell and atom in her body have perfect communication.
We have also been blessed by a friend who told us about St. Charbel. He was a priest, monk and hermit that lived his life in the path of our Lord Jesus Christ, detaching himself greatly from this world. As a result of his devout service to our Lord, in the late 1800’s, after his death his body was incorrupt and lifelike for 65 years and exuded an oil, of which many miracles are attributed. For those of you that are not Catholic, we do not believe that St. Charbel performed these miracles himself, but that because of his extraordinary holiness and devotion to Jesus Christ, God preserved his body from decomposing and authored these miracles through St. Charbel’s intercession (fervent prayers) to draw more people closer to Him and the holiness each and everyone of us are called to. Also, when we “pray” to saints, since they are our dear friends in Christ, it is the same as me asking you to pray for me. Since we can’t physically speak to them we use the word pray to describe what we are doing. Our friend also gave us some of this oil and Lucy has me bless her with it daily. She has become very fond of St. Charbel and her face lights up when she speaks of him. She made me hang his holy card in her bed and she says he talks to her! Before I knew much about him, I didn’t even know he was a priest, she told me that he baptizes people. It’s things like this that make you realize how innocence helps us to stay connected to God and His saints. If only we all could remain that way throughout our lives.
At this point, I don’t know what will come next. Since canceling the appointment I have not had an opportune time to schedule any appointments with the other surgeons. I hope to have time to sit down and do this towards the end of this week. I hope that you will continue to pray for this whole situation and for God’s guidance in our discernment and Lucy’s healing, one way or another!!