August 9th

Matt is doing so well. He had a great night and I was able to stay with him and make sure that he was okay. I am amazed at how much he has started moving both arms. He is reaching up to shake hands with the doctors and anyone that comes to visit him. The doctors have reinstated the OT/PT orders and also the speech orders, so on Monday, maybe Sunday if we are lucky he will be able to start moving again. I am praying that he gets to go to the rehab floor early this week, or at least by the middle of the week. He was trying to help take the pillows out from under his back earlier today and that is the first time he has done that. I was talking to him and telling him how much I loved him and asked if he loved me even half as much as I love him and he responded by waving his hand(like get out of here) and then he gave me the biggest smile as if to say I am only joking. This is the first time that he has smiled like that since the initial incident happened. I cried right away and he looked at me as if to say what are you crying for? I told him that they were happy tears and then he seemed to understand. I am sure he was thinking ohh there goes that sappy wife of mine again. He is getting better and better. God is good to us and I don't think that there are words to ever describe how thankful I am that God has given me my husband back, when the doctors did not give any hope. God continues to show me just how wonderful he is and I continue to be thankful, more and more everyday. Thank you all for helping us pray for Matt and I ask you to continue to pray for him as he starts rehab soon. This will be hard at first, but in the long run he will benefit the most from this. After rehab Matt will be able to go home and continue rehab on an outpatient basis. I am looking forward to having him home with me and the boys. Thank you again for all your prays and love for Matt, the boys and me. We will be forever thankful and in your debt. We love you all.

August 8th

Good News keeps coming. It took all day, but Matt is back on the 3rd floor where we started out and would you believe that he is in the same room that we left on Monday. What are the chances!! (That is my new saying) They started feeding him through the PEG tube in his stomach today and that is going well. For the past couple of days I have been hearing his stomach growl and I am not hearing that anymore. I talked again to Dr. Chen the wonderful doctor that is going to help Matt. He told me that the procedure that they are going to do on Matt will last from 1 hour to 3 or 4 hours depending on how things are going. Matt will have to stay in ICU right after the procedure to make sure that there is no bleeding and then either 1 or 2 days later he will go home. There will be anywhere from 3 months to 6 months between each surgery. So this whole process could take a year or more depending on what they are able to get done and how the AVM responds to the procedures. This will all take place in San Antonio at the military hospital up there. We are still excited and very hopeful. We are praying for Matt to be able to go to the rehab floor in the next couple of days, maybe by Monday or Tuesday. I have to start back to work on Tuesday and I would like to have him in rehab before I go back to school. I was going to try and stay with him for another couple of weeks, but with the doctors wanting to start the procedures as soon as he is able to travel, I need to save all of my leave for that. I hate to have to leave him, but his Mom is here and she will stay with him during the day and I will come and stay at night after I get off work. Please continue to pray for him. I think and it is only me, but I think that he is doing better now than he was before he got to this hospital the 25th of July. He is trying to talk more, moving both arms and legs more, and he is also more alert. He has been reaching up and scratching his nose and eye, he has not done that for several weeks. I am not sure that I shared this from yesterday, but the last EEG showed that everything is normal with his brain activity. I asked the doctor what the difference was between the EEG that was done the day after the rupture and this last one was? He told me that the one they did right after the rupture showed that the brain activity was slow and this last one they did the day after the seizure showed that everything was normal. That was great news, since we have not had an EEG since the day after the rupture. God is amazing and He continues to show us just how awesome He really is. I am sorry that it took me so long to post today, I will try to do better. Thank you again and again for being supportive and for being our pray warriors. I know for a fact that Matt would not be where he is today if it were not for all of your prayers and the grace of GOD. Thank you again for loving us and for all of your prayers.

August 7th

Well another wonderful day God has given us. Matt is doing well and will be moving up to the floor and out of the ICU on Friday. Our favorite nurse Lisa is going to make sure that we have a room on the 3rd floor so she could take care of Matt again. The doctor that came in and told us that he thought he could fix the AVM came back and said that with some treatments that they would at least be able to shrink the AVm enough to us radiation on it. It will take more than one treatment to fix this, he even said as many as 7 or 8. The treatments are relatively simple and not to invasive. If you are interested you can look up AVM Embolization or this site has a lot of information on it:
http://www.irsa.org/avms.html. They would like to do it as soon as Matt is strong enough to travel to San Antonio. This was another very exciting day for us. The doctors came in and they took the tube out of his nose and they are planning to start him on tube feedings in the morning. They will continue to use this for feeding until he is able to eat enough to maintain his strength. I must tell you God has given Matt the most wonderful doctor that is overseeing his care. Dr. Reddy is great and he shared with us what he thought about Matt having a seizure today. He told me that he knew that God answered our prayers. Not just my prayers but our prayers. He told me that he believed that God allowed Matt to have a seizure so that Dr. Chin could come and put the PEG in and that he would want to help fix the AVM. Dr. Reddy said to me, what are the chances of all of this happen at the same time?? He said it is because God allowed the seizure to happen. I wanted to share another verse that has touched my life over the past year. It is a verse that my church used as we were launching a building campaign and it is as follows:
"Now to Him who is able to do immeasureably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us (and in our families)...to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen (Ephesians 3:20-21 ).
We always need to remember that God can do far more than we are every able to imagine and that if we will only ask and trust, He will be faithful to answer out prayers. I hope that you will all be sure to give God all the glory for what He is doing in Matt and please continue to pray for him. The next step is back up to rehab and hopefully that will be very soon. I have to start work on Tuesday and I would like to see him in rehab by then. I have to return to work especially since we will have to make several trips to San Antonio in the near future. I will need all of my leave days to go with Matt when they work on his head. Take care and know that we love you all and are thankful for all your prayers.

August 6th

I am not even sure how to begin this next entry. Holy Moly does not even come close to expressing what I am about to tell you. Just in case you were not aware of this God is sooooo AWESOME!!!! Now that I have said that I need to update you on Matt. They were able to get the PEG in his stomach. The doctors had to use the CAT scan to do it and it was a success. What they did was to put a stitch in his stomach and pull it up to the skin and all of his intestines fell back into place and they were able to put the PEG in. That alone is amazing but it gets better. I am glad that you are sitting while you read this. Matt's doctor told us that he was going to get someone to put this PEG it didn't matter who it was. Well God knew who it was and man does he know how to pick them. The doctor that put the PEG in is a Neurointerventional Radiologist. He wanted to talk to me after they had put the PEG in and he asked me what the doctors were saying about the AVM in Matt's brain. I told him what I knew and that the neurosurgon was going to send Matt's information out to other doctors, but he was not sure if they were going to be able to fix the AVM. Well here is the AWESOME part hold on... This radiologist told me that he took the liberty of looking at all of Matt's scans and test and that he had sent them to his associate in San Antonio. He also told me that he thought that they would be able to fix the AVM with a little glue and some coils. This is a procedure that I have read about online. He told me that this is something that they deal with all the time and that he is pretty sure that they will be able to help, becasue Matt is far to young to have this hanging over his head for the rest of his life. All I could do was cry and he could not understand why I was crying. What are the chances that this person from San Antonio would just happen to be here in Corpus working this summer and that he would be the one that put the PEG in Matt's stomach, and that he would be the one that would tell us that he can fix the AVM. I can only think of one person who could make all of this happen at the same time and that would be the one and only true GOD that we serve. I am once again taken to a point of amazement and I have been there many times in the past month.
There is a verse that has really become part of my life the past few weeks and that verse is:
Mark 11:23-24
"For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain,"Be removed and cast into the sea," and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. "Therefore I say unto you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you will receive them, and you will have them.
I read this verse one night and it has stuck with me throughout this whole crazy rollercoaster ride that we have been on the past month. I started praying very specific prays about Matt, I would pray for his right arm to get stronger and for the left arm to get stronger. I would also pray that God would hold the AVM in His hand and keep it safe and He has done that, now not only is He keeping it safe, but He has brought someone into our lives that will fix it. I am just in awe and amazement at the miracles that God is doing day in and day out. I get up in the mornings and look at Matt and see a miracle and then God just keeps adding to the pile. I feel like God is personlly involved in our lives and I am not sure that I have ever felt that way before. I always knew that He had a hand on us, but I never felt like it was personal. There was a lady that posted a comment to that affect today and it really brought it into light for me, that God is personally involved and that is how He wants to be invloved in everyones life. I once again want to thank you all for your prayers and support, and I thank God for you every day. Knowing that I can count on you to pray and lift Matt up means more to me than you will ever know. God has surrounded us with an awesome support and thank you for being a part of that team. God bless you and I will keep you pasted. Thanks again!!!!

August 6th

Good afternoon. Matt is down in the radiology lab as I am typing this and they are working under the guide of a CAT scan to get the PEG put into his stomach. His doctor is pretty sure that they will be able to get it in this time. This means that the NG tube in his nose will come out today as well. When they are done with that procedure he will come back to ICU and they will start taking him off the vent. This will mean that he gets one tube in and 2 tubes out. Please pray that all goes well and I will post another update later after he gets back and I can go and see him again. God is sooo awesome and He is watching over Matt night and day.

August 5th

Holy Moly!!! What a day yesterday was! We went down for the PEG and once again that did not happen. I was a little ticked off to say the least. According to the doctor he did not order the PEG and he was not sure why they had brought him down. He blamed it on the nurse and I have a hard time believing that a nurse would just take upon herself to bring a patient down. Well that is neither here nor there. After we got back down to his room they got him cleaned up and ready to rest for a while. He seemed to get cold and had goose bumps. He started shaking like he was really cold. Little did I know that was the beginning of a seizure. I called the nurse and they called a code white, which means doctors assistance right away. There must have been 15 peopel come into the room and they brought the crash cart with them. I was not leaving Matt, but they asked my mom and his mom to wait outside. They started pushing meds in him trying to get him to calm down. After 12 minutes, but for me it seemed like an eternity and way more than 12 minutes, Matt started to relax. That was the most intense 12 minutes that I have every gone through. The doctor said that he would need to have the breathing tube put back in because of all of the meds that they had given him to help him clam down. At this time I did leave the room and had a little break down outside. All I could think of was that I was going to have to tell our boys that their dad was not going to make it all over again. That is also one moment in time that I do not ever wish to have to live through again. So, after the put the breathing tube back in the took him to ICU. I was not happy about this because we are back to only seeing him 4-5 hours out of the day. Finally, around 8:30 we were able to go in and see him and the neurolgist came in while I was in there to read some of the tests that they had done. They did an EEG and it showed that there had been seizure activity, but that it had stopped and he has not had anymore. We talked about how Matt was acting the morning before the seizure and I told him that he was smilng and acting silly with everyone. He said that was good and that he expected him to be doing the same thing in a couple of days. There should not be any long term affects from the seizure, but he will have to be put on anti-seizure meds for the rest of his life. I told him that was a minor detail. They are taking Matt for another CT and doing another EEG today to make sure that there have been no other seizures and to make sure that the AVM has not bleed anymore. The neurologist did tell me last night that he did not expect to find that they AVM had bleed on the CT that they wanted to do just to make sure. I have just come from seeing him and he looks good. He is able to squeeze my hand, he is moving his arm and he was waving his toes at one of the PT people that have worked with him. Once he is more alert and the doctor gives the all clear from the tests that they are doing, they will start removing the breathing tube. God has once again proven that he is in control and that he is the great physician. Yesterday after the seizure happened, I was a little down and was questioning why God lets things like this happen to good people like Matt and our pastor shared a story with me about how our story has already helped people. I was amazed and once again God has taken me to the place where I am in total amazement with all that He can do in out lives. You know if all of this has to happen to help one person then God has done a great deed. I have to tell you about one more thing before I close this post. Every night for the past week or so Matt and I have been praying. When I pray I touch every part of his body, his head and I ask God to hold the AVM in His hand and keep it safe, then I pray for each leg, each arm and so on. I finally end up praying for his lungs and his heart. I was praying with him last night and when I got to praying for his heart and I aske God to help him know how much I love him, he squeezed my hand and this was all while he was still under the influence of the sedation. It was Matt's way once again of telling me that he was still here and that he was still fighting to get better. God is so amazing and I will forever give him all of the praise and glory for what He has done in our lives. Keep praying becasue God is hearing all those prayers and He is answering them day in and day out. Thank you all for your support and for standing in the gap for us. I thank God daily for friends and family who not only love us, but love our God as well.

August 4th

We just got some exciting news!! Matt is going to get the PEG tube put into his stomach at 11:30 today. I was not expecting this, the doctor was not very sure he would do it today or wait until Tuesday. God is good to us, this means that Matt should be able to go back up to the rehab floor in a couple of days. This is a step in the right direction. He has been more alert since they have started feeding him the 2600 calories a day and seems to have more energy, imagine that. I will update later about how the PEG went and if there is any news about when he is moving up to the rehab floor. Thanks again for praying and keep those prayers going up, because they are sure working.

August 3

Today has been a pretty good day. Matt was up and in the chair for several hours today. Getting up and sitting in the chair takes a lot out of him and he gets very tired. Of course before he got to sit in the chair the Physical and Occupational therapist came in and worked with him. They are both impressed with what he can do, many people are surprised when they work with him that he is doing so much and doing it so well. This to me is just another way of God showing me how awesome He is and what He can do with one of His children. The GI doctor is going to do another xray in the morning and see how his intestines look, I would like to see them put the PEG in on Monday, but he seems to want to wait until Tuesday. I am pushing for Monday just so we can get it over and done with and be on our way back up to rehab. Please pray that the GI doctor will come in and want to put it in on Monday. Please also pray for me, I am suppose to start back to school on the 12th of August. As long as Matt is doing well this should not be a problem, however if he is not back up on the rehab floor I am not going to be able to leave him and go to work. They have transfered me to a new building and I am a bit nervous about that, but I know that God will work all of that out. Well that is what is going on today, please know that we appreciate all of your prayers and support, God has surrounded us with a great group of friends and family who love us and are here for us all the time.