Mike has finally gotten stable enough to be moved to a regular floor. The amazing staff at our community hospital moved heaven and earth to make sure he was a close to Mom’s room as possible. They’re two doors away—Room 19 and 21. I’m so thankful for small mercies!

I feel like the seals from the featured image on this post. I’m tired. Mike was moved to the step-down unit late Monday night. He’s still improving and getting stronger each day. Mom was admitted to the hospital yesterday afternoon so she could start her first chemo cycle inpatient. We also talked with the medical oncologist at Duke today about the next steps. Thus…I’m tired, ya’ll!

Mike’s still in the ICU. Incrementally improving, but still here. There are lots of things that still need to improve so that he can get strong enough to receive further treatment. The featured image for this post shows a sample of what his IV pole has looked like most of the week.

Mike woke up yesterday afternoon! I’m elated to be writing these words. The words thank you don’t even begin to cover our gratitude for the prayers. There’s still an extremely long road ahead of us, but this is a hopeful step in the right direction.

Mike is in the ICU. Today marks Day 3. I’m not well emotionally, so buckle your seatbelts for this update. It’s going to be hard to read. Trust me, it was even harder to write.

I have a big request of all of you who have taken up the mantle of being prayer warriors for us. On advice from a couple friends, I want to post encouraging Scripture all over his hospital room when he’s inpatient. I’m asking you guys to make posters or notecards with encouraging Scripture and mail them to us or drop them off at the house.

Quite a bit has happened over the last 7 days and there’s more to come. We’re exhausted, to say the least.

We’re doing another tour of the hospital. Mike came in on Wednesday both extremely dehydrated and retaining water in his extremities. His kidney function is low; not dangerously so, but low enough to keep an eye on him until it resolves. In addition, he was having orthostatic blood pressure drops (when he stands up, it drops), so they’re working to figure that out.

Mom is healing well from her surgery and has some upcoming preliminary tests and procedures to prepare for treatments.

Last week ended up being a whirlwind of doctor’s appointments and information. We received three very good future treatment options for Mike and took the weekend to think and pray about which would be best. Mom has some more tests to determine her treatment plan, so an update about her will be coming in a later post.