An update

Friends and Family and Perfect Strangers-

This is Allen writing from home. Gillian and my mom are in with Joe. He did okay today (Sunday) and would have done great except that while we were changing his sheets, his IV was accidentally pulled out(mainly due to Daddy). It was so hard to watch them try repeatedly to get new access especially knowing it was my fault. I know it's just a needle prick, and in the grand scheme of his disease it's not a drop
in the bucket, but it is just hard to watch. Anyways, they were successful and he immediately went to sleep so he should have a good night.

The plan for Joseph hasn't changed at all. We are still waiting for the pathology to return and his treatment options will depend on the diagnosis. We should know something by Wednesday or Thursday, but if it is at all unsure then the sample will be sent across the country for other pathologists' opinions. He should be able to leave the PICU tomorrow and be transferred back to the regular floors. His recovery
from surgery is going well and there have been no complications so far. He has been laying mainly on his right side which leaves his supposedly deaf left ear up in the air and he has heard every word that we have said to him. So either the hearing test was wrong or the surgery relieved the pressure on the auditory nerve. Either way that is a small victory. You can pray that he will continue to recover and that he will start to eat the food that he keeps demanding but takes one tiny nibble and says "all done." The boy never eats cheeseburgers but that is the first thing I heard him say today "I want a cheeseburger."

This is hard for me to write for many reasons, the least of which is that I used to hate blogs and never really thought they served much purpose. But let me tell you that this has been the greatest encouragement that we have. We love hearing from family and old friends and friends of friends. There is nothing better than to read
so many comments from so many different people in so many different states and countries and know that everyone is praying for us. At last count I think we have people praying in 5 of the 7 continents, so all we need is to get Africa and the penguins down in Antarctica involved. Yesterday I started to copy and paste some of the comments to a word file along with some other emails to bring to the room so we
could read them when we wanted/needed to and it was 34 pages long. I had to shrink the font down to microscopic size to get it to 19 pages. And there have been around 40 comments since. It is truly amazing and overwhelming.

Thanks to those who have come by our house and cleaned and left notes and gifts. To those brave souls that volunteered to rake our yard I am especially thankful. I'm sure you didn't know there would be three years worth of leaves back there or you wouldn't have signed up.

I wish that we had time and energy to respond and thank everyone individually who have visited/written/prayed. Ya'll have no idea what an encouragement the body of Christ has been to us. There is no way that we could go through this without each and every one of you. In my dark moments when I lose hope and wonder where God is during this, I come out to the waiting room or open email or check the comments and find Him in your faces, thoughts, hopes, and prayers.

Many many thanks,
Allen, Gillian, Joe, and Holly