Ron's CT scan turned into another long afternoon in Interventional Radiology! Dr. Parikh (Interventional Radiologist) found the spot in the colon that is leaking (this is called a fistula). The way these are treated and the reason he has so many drains in place is that fistulas will typically heal on their own given time and once drain tubes are able to dry the area out. His tissue is such it would be disastrous to go in surgically unless there is no other option. Praise God the feeding tube is inserted far enough down in intestines that it is past this point; they are able to continue the tube feeds! Very important!
So, this afternoon, they inserted another tube behind the liver that should help control the hematoma so he shouldn't leak through incision site, and placed another in place to drain where the fistula is in colon. They also have set up a system of saline solution going into one of the tubes to irrigate the belly cavity to help break up and clean out the hematoma and the others are on suction to pull it out.
Ron's making new friends in IR (Interventional Radiology); evidently he gets quite chatty while on the "happy juice". He even received a Christmas card from the nurse anesthetist and it was signed from "your new best friend". Pretty funny!!! She also enclosed several encouraging scripture verses.
Continue to pray...every tube that goes in increases chance of infection but the good it does outweighs the risk at this point. And as always for his vitals: blood pressure, heart rate, temp, hemoglobin, white cell count, creatnine (kidney function), etc. That they will remain stable throughout all of this!
Ryan returned home this evening, tired, but glad to have everything taken care of in Florida. He said he is officially a Texan again who vacations in Florida!
This was the devotional I read today from Streams in the Desert....very fitting.
"In all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us" (Rom. 8:37).
The Gospel is so arranged and the gift of God so great that you may take the very enemies that fight you and the forces that are arrayed against you and make them steps up to the very gates of heaven and into the presence of God.
Like the eagle, who sits on a crag and watches the sky as it is filling with blackness, and the forked lightnings are playing up and down, and he is sitting perfectly still, turning one eye and then the other toward the storm. But he never moves until he begins to feel the burst of the breeze and knows that the hurricane has struck him; with a scream, he swings his breast to the storm, and uses the storm to go up to the sky; away he goes, borne upward upon it.
That is what God wants of every one of His children, to be more than conqueror, turning the storm-cloud into a chariot. You know when one army is more than conqueror it is likely to drive the other from the field, to get all the ammunition, the food and supplies, and to take possession of the whole. That is just what our text means. There are spoils to be taken!
Beloved, have you got them? When you went into that terrible valley of suffering did you come out of it with spoils? When that injury struck you and you thought everything was gone, did you so trust in God that you came out richer than you went in? To be more than conqueror is to take the spoils from the enemy and appropriate them to yourself. What he had arranged for your overthrow, take and appropriate for yourself.
May you take your spoils, as well!!!
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