This information came from Bruce to Verle to me. Bruce and Maureen visited Tom yesterday (Saturday). They found him working on his laptop — doing a program for work. He spoke in complete sentences, very close to normal speech, only occasionally having to stop to find a word. It seems that though Tom keeps having “spells” in which he is functioning very poorly, we are seeing continuing improvement overall in his functioning. His speech has greatly improved from when we were there Thursday. The fine motor skills of his right hand were still weak on Thursday — he had trouble picking up things — but his hand grasp was so strong that my hand was still a bit sore the next morning!
The following devotional thoughts came to me this morning when I was half awake and praying for Tom:
For each of us who follow Christ, our position is clear: “By grace we are saved through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any of us should boast.” Paul often speaks of boasting only of “the cross of Jesus Christ.” Like Paul, we have times when our faith seems weak and we may even have doubts — but our position is in Christ — it’s not based on how close to God we feel at any given moment, or on how much we DO for Christ.
The next verse, a favorite of mine, builds on the above and ministers to me today:
“And now just as you trusted Christ to save you, trust Him, too, for each day’s problems; live in vital union with Him. Let your roots grow down into Him and draw up nourishment from Him. See that you go on growing in the Lord and become strong and vigorous in the truth you were taught. let your lives overflow with joy and thanksgiving for all He has done.” (Living Bible – Colossians 2:6-7)
I’m also reminded the He is God and I am not — I have to entrust Tom to Him — God knows what is best and loves Tom even more than we do!
These thoughts are very helpful to me as I struggle through this — I hope that they might be helpful to you, too.
Peggy/Mom/Grandma
So glad to see this blog…mom just told me about it. I thank each of you for taking time for the updates. Wyoming is a long way from Omaha and this helps for us to be able to feel a little more connected.
Followup on Saturday’s visit:
Adam, Carsten, and I went up to visit Tom for a couple hours Sat. afternoon. We found him immediately very glad to see us, as the boys really surprised him. He was sitting almost upright in bed, and had devoured an entire meal, except the applesauce, which he ate with some delight in front of us, demonstrating rather excellent motor skills with both hands. He was very engaging and talked with larger and longer sentences and vocabulary, appeared to be reaching for tougher words, and finding them. We were so glad for the time with him. The chaplain was there when we arrived, and Pastor Scott came in just as we were leaving, so he was certainly in good hands Sat! We heard him recount some confusion about ‘how we were ahead in the football game yesterday and then got behind, seeming somewhat bewildered about how that happened so quickly. I assured him that the Husker team pretty much missed that part too, yielding the result of yet another come from behind….!
Tom confided that he had not had a very good morning, although he’s been getting 3 pretty good meals a day down, the a.m. had a short episode, and Dr. Thorell came at noon to visit with him and he was nearly unresponsive during that short period of time…nurse filled me in on the details of that…so it was refreshing, but still a concern, that he had fluctuated that much in such a short time. We were thankful to see the return of the ‘old Tom’ as we visited Sat. afternoon, and hope that those times will increase, and the b.p. stabilization will improve. The heart rate racing seems to be not a problem for the past 3 days or so, and we are thankful for stabilization there, as well! Keep it up, Tom! We hope to visit Wed. mid-a.m. again…