To say the past 48 hours have been a roller coaster would be a pretty serious understatement.

I left off at how Corey was doing Friday, after “pulling through” Thursday night, which we didn’t expect him to do. Friday was a much better day than Thursday and we both got a pretty good night’s sleep Friday night. They still had him pretty heavily sedated and on a lot of oxygen and after the scare of Thursday, he needed it.

Saturday morning he was doing pretty well so they decided to do a one-hour breathing trial. He was (is) still on the ventilator, but they turned it off and had him breathing 100% on his own. Being the overachiever that he is, he remained off oxygen and breathing on his own from 7:30 AM until noon! At noon they decided to try and ambulate him (move him around some) and had him move from the bed to a chair so he could sit upright and get his circulation moving a bit. They helped him stand up and asked him to take a few steps in place just to get his blood moving before helping him over to the chair. He gave us all a bit of a scare – and then a big laugh – when he took a couple steps and followed them up with a couple moves that looked like he was collapsing but I think he meant to look like he was dancing.

Anyone remember Elaine and the Seinfeld “Spaz Dance” episode???

Yep, it kind of looked like that.

They planned to have Corey up and in the chair for a couple hours, but he was comfortable there so he stayed until they moved him back into bed about 9 PM. He started the day out pretty strong and there were a lot of people coming through to visit, but by the end of the day, you could tell he wasn’t feeling well. They didn’t even have him stand to make the few steps back to bed last night, they used a machine that looked like a big automated stork delivering him to his bed. It would’ve been funny if the situation was different.

Last night was a rough night. His RN and Respiratory Therapist were in and out All. Night. Long. His chest X-ray from yesterday actually looked worse than the one from the day before. There appears to be more fluid in his lungs and the test results and cultures from the bronchoscopy still haven’t come back, so we still don’t even know what we’re fighting. They’re still using broad spectrum antibiotics and won’t know what to target until those test results start coming back. Some of them are done in-house and should begin coming back today, but some of them had to be sent out and will take a little longer.

They made the switch from the night nurse (Blake) to the day nurse (Megan) a little bit ago. Megan is the same nurse we had yesterday and she told me this morning that Corey is much sicker today than he was yesterday. With my full blessing she’s not allowing visitors today and said that Corey needs to rest, rest, rest. They’ve significantly increased his sedation and oxygen levels and need him to stop trying to work so hard, because his body is not yet in the shape to fight as hard as it’s wanting to. She said yesterday’s Corey and the burst of energy he was experiencing was likely a response to All. The. Steroids. they pumped him full of Thursday and Friday and that today’s Corey is a more realistic picture of where his body really is.

Psalm 27:13-14 says, “I am still confident of this, I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord. Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” That Psalm has been a guiding light to me for many years, but never more so than in the past 48 hours. I remain confident that the Lord performed a major miracle in Corey’s body Thursday PM/Friday AM – and now we’re in the “Wait for the Lord. Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord” part. I believe in miraculous healing and that if it lines up with His plan, the Lord could allow Corey to sit bolt upright in bed and stump the entire medical community. I also believe that the Lord works through people. I believe He has gifted those in the medical community with a mind for medicine and science and that He will and does and can minister healing through those He has gifted with the passion and ability to heal. Being “confident of this” allows me to have total peace and faith that the Lord will use whatever combination of the above to do what He wills in Corey’s body.

The attending physician and ICU team just made their rounds. They concur with Megan that today’s Corey is much more indicative of where he really is. They’ve made the decision to medically paralyze him again so that they can let the machines do 100% of the work. Even with the machines set to do 90% of the work and his body to do only 10% of the work, he’s still working too hard. They need him completely unstimulated to allow his body to make the long climb back to full health.

We’re not out of the woods, but, like yesterday, I do feel that we’ve crossed over the most critical point and that the Lord is not done with Corey. And to be honest, I’m pretty anxious to talk to him in the weeks to come and see just what he’s been experiencing in this in-between time. If it’s been a wild ride for us, I’m betting it has been for him too. He reached for my phone yesterday and pulled up the calendar and was completely shocked that it was Saturday. He wrote on the white board (he can’t talk so he’s communicating by writing notes) that he still doesn’t know what happened and why he is where he is. I gave him a super abbreviated version and told him we’d talk about it more later. He nodded OK and went back to sleep.

Thanks for your continued prayers. I literally finished reading the book of Acts on Monday morning of last week, and am convinced that this is the body of Christ at work the way it was intended. You all continue to bless us and we are so very grateful.