Monday, October 15, 2007

7:17 pm (DC time)

This morning we went to the hospital at 6, right after he had his MRI and he was taken off his sedatives. It was another morning of comforting squeezes and arm movements from David. When we walked in, David was still. We started talking to him and rubbing his head, feet, and holding his hands. When we told David that Kelli was holding his hand he squeezed it tightly and rubbed her hand with his thumb. He started "posturing" which is what the doctors call it when he flexes his arms, chest, and sometimes bends at the knees. The squeezes feel more sincere because you can feel different amounts of pressure being applied from each finger. Then Dad walked up towards David's head and started talking to him. David immediately reacted by tilting his head towards dad, flexed his chest and shoulders and lifted his left elbow and right arm up. We truly felt that David was aware of what we were saying. We saw, what we'd like to call tears puddling in the corner of his eyes and dripping down his cheek. The drs. claim its just eye secretions. (What little faith these drs. have!! They obviously don't know what they're talking about!!! ha ha!) He was also reaching for his ventilator tube and coughing. The dr. said that coughing is a really good reflex and shows signs of improvement. He would put his thumb between his leg and the cold wrap and try to pull it off.
We made sure to tell him how he has hundreds of you all commenting and praying for him. We shared with him your stories and encouraging words and read to him the scriptures you all have sent. Which brings us to our other miracle of the day! We handed Kelli my mom's Bible and asked if she would read us some encouraging scriptures. She opened it up and came across 2 Samuel 11:2 which for some reason was partially underlined and was brought to her attention. I noticed her just staring at the Bible sorta with her mouth dropped to the floor and I asked her what she found. She said, "Well, its a little ironic, but for some reason this was underlined: 'One evening David got up from his bed'!!" None of us could believe it and we just started to cry/laugh as we Huddlestons tend to do! Other than in this circumstance, there is no explanation for why my mom would've underlined these otherwise non-important words. There is no doubt in our mind that this is a promise given especially to us from the Lord! What we don't know, is why the next 2 words weren't underlined, "and walked"! But we will take this one miracle at a time and won't press out luck!!!! We have faith that David will do more than walk, so maybe this would just be putting a limitation on God and we don't want to do that! God was at work when mom and dad chose the name David for our brother.
Now, as far as the medical side of it all... we were told that the preliminary reading of this morning's MRI showed a sheering of the brain. We should learn more about this tomorrow when we speak to the radiologist/neurologist dude. We were given a good demonstration of this, but its pretty hard to re-explain. We'll try to get it straight for tomorrow's blog.
Please pray for Kelli as she had to fly home today. We had to escort her into the airport as far as we could take her because we feared she would not get on! She is not looking forward to going back to school tomorrow and taking her mid-terms. It is hard for all of us to focus on anything else but David, especially studying for accounting and business statistics classes!
Oh, yeah! Mom also found out today that she is able to take 40 days of catastrophic leave... paid! That should take her through the end of January! God is again, showing his grace.
God is good to us and full of so many promises! We love and miss you all so much!
Christa (and the rest of the Hudd's)