Update #99 on Kevin

So, it’s the day before Thanksgiving. We are doing more training today at the hospital. I will be staying there tonight with Kevin and the family is coming up tomorrow for us to all spend Thanksgiving together with Kevin.


Even in the midst of all this we have been finding reasons to be thankful.
- We are thankful for those who have come and worked on Kevin’s house so far.
- We are thankful for the money given towards Kevin’s kitchen project.
- We are thankful for those that fixed the heat at Kevin’s house.
- We are thankful for those who are training us well at Meadowbrook.
- We are thankful for the encouragement that we receive.
- We are thankful for the kitchen installers.
- We are thankful for all those who worked on the house in many various ways.
- We are thankful for the progress that Kevin has made, even if it is slow.
- We are thankful that Kevin has not been throwing up the last couple days.
- We are thankful for lots more too.

The medical equipment company is supposed to bring the equipment over on Friday. Our next target for bringing Kevin home is Monday. We will keep working on the house and training until then.

Thanks for reading and praying.
Matt, Angie and family
_______________________________
http://www.prayforkevin.com/

Update #98 on Kevin

This morning has been another roller coaster. I wonder at times, at what point that becomes normal. After several meetings on the phone and in person, here at Meadowbrook, I think that we may have reached a milestone when it comes to family training. At all times, whether our family is watching or practicing care techniques there is to be someone in the room from the staff. When we are trained in something and are signed off as trained, we do not become responsible for that task. Each task is still the responsibility of the hospital staff. Kevin’s doctor, who learned of this trend this morning, described it this way….we are ‘not responsible for running a hospital’. We are being trained for home health care. We are learning and being supervised. But the staff is still charting and following schedules of medicine, turning, etc…. Some of the confusion of training was cleared up today as well.


I made someone cry this morning. Now, let me be fair, I never once raised my voice, and I was calm the entire conversation. That may not always be the case, but it was today. I dared to suggest when asking a question about inconsistency that something had not been done that was supposed to have been done. Asked to leave the office, I stood dumbfounded as to what had just happened. We were told to do one thing in home health care, when we hadn’t seen it done here at Meadowbrook. So, asked how imperative it was to do it, and if it was why it hadn’t been done so far here. Someone else eventually answered the question.

Two people have sent us links about a medical breakthrough going on in Europe. There is a man who was misdiagnosed after a severe traumatic brain injury, after having a new type of scan. Here’s a link to the story http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1230092/Rom-Houben-Patient-trapped-23-year-coma-conscious-along.html. He was misdiagnosed for twenty-three years.

With a time crunch to get Kevin’s stuff out of the restoration company’s storage, repairing and preparing the house, training at the hospital, we are able to hold our heads above water only due to the grace of God. People are screaming at us on all sides. There interest is the most important to them, so it feels like everyone wants everything done at the same time. We are holding together though. Thanks for the prayers and encouragement.

Thanks for reading and praying. It means so much to our family during this crisis.
Matt, Angie and family
_______________________________
http://www.prayforkevin.com/

Update #97 on Kevin

Kevin is still at Meadowbrook. I think everybody involved (ie doctors, family, etc..) is realizing that it takes time to prepare to do home health care for someone. Last week, Kevin threw up several times. They were a few times that he aspirated (got it in his lungs). After doing an X-Ray last week they saw he has some pneumonia in his lungs now. Taylor texted us this morning with the news that he was throwing up again.


We found a storage and have been getting Kevin’s stuff moved there that is not coming into the house. We found mold growing on a couple dressers that we thought we damaged, but the insurance assesser was not going to pay for those. Can I just say that most days as of late, I struggle with hating insurance companies?

We tried really hard to get Kevin’s house to a point where some of us could start staying there (Angie, the kids and myself). Many volunteers were working on the house last week. We worked all day Friday, but it wasn’t quite okay to move in, so we crashed somewhere else. This morning is the first morning that we woke up here. There are still things to be done, as we prepare for Kevin coming here.

The past several days have been a mixture or training, moving, and being frustrated at the training process that keeps changing and yet remaining inconsistent. We hope that a meeting on Monday will help clear that up.

In one of the times when Kevin was throwing up, Angie was calming him down. She saw tears start coming out of both eyes and a look of realization about what was going on. We haven’t put any ointment or drops in the left eye for weeks, it was tears. While we don’t want Kevin to throw up or feel bad. Seeing tears, shows another ‘new’ thing that Kevin is doing and continuing to progress.

Have a great Sunday. We’ll be at Highland Park Christian Church. What will you be doing?

Thanks for praying and reading,
Matt, Angie and family
_______________________________
http://www.prayforkevin.com/