Yahoo - Week Two

We again want to thank everyone for their continued prayers for Paul. We have received so many blessings and we used Sunday to sit quietly and reflect on all the great out pouring of love shown to this family. We prayed that all of you will be blessed abundantly for these acts of charity.

We met with the pulmonologist (lungs) and he said that Paul has been fighting pneumonia and his white blood count is back down, which means the antibiotics are working. He no longer has a fever either. He is still heavily sedated at this time, something they have had to do to control the pain. Paul was showing signs of distress, so the meds have been increased to help him manage the pain. He needs his resources to recover, not handle pain. They will put in the trach tomorrow at 10 am, a very simple procedure that will be done in his room. This will allow all the tubes to be taken out of his mouth and will be more comfortable all the way around. It will be good to see his full face. The shunt in the brain was also removed, and the draining of brain fluid has stopped. All these are positive things and we are holding on to everything that helps sustain our hopes for a miracle. It is important to remember, that at this time, his prognosis is (in medical terms) not good. There is no response from the brain at this time and we are very prayerful that we will see something soon.

Also, we were told that Paul will, in all probability, not have very good vision, if at all, in his left eye. It was severly damaged. This confirmed our very first thoughts about his sight. But everything remains in God's hands and we are reminded so concretely that we need to keep our trust in our loving God. He will provide all that we need as we go through our day and we give him our love and thanks in response.

Another item on the list for this week is the possible surgery to repair the damage to the left side of the face (bone above his eye) and the left temple area. They will do plastic surgery to reconstruct the left side of the skull and orbital. They wanted to wait until Paul stabilized. After that surgery, we have the possibility of moving Paul out of the Intensive Care Unit. He may be moved to the hospital in town that specializes in brain injury patients. That will be a very critical time for Paul, as there will be very aggressive management of trying to get Paul to actually respond to his environment.

God's blessing to you today. We are so grateful to everyone and please know that we could not do this without all this prayerful support.

Love,
Jon and Rebecca Fidero
ps - we will be loading some pictures onto this site today, it helps to picture Paul smiling!