if you pray...

please pray for my former student, mike.

this is an account of what happened, written by his older sister:

Hi everyone,

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Mike’s older sister, and I just wanted to take this time to update you on how he’s doing. First of all, thank you so much for all of your posts and messages and calls; I can’t even begin to tell you how much they’ve meant to my family and me. We’ve been getting a lot of support from family and friends, and your prayers and best wishes have really made these past couple days easier on us. Please continue to pray for Mike and keep him in your thoughts!

I know there has been a lot of confusion about Mike’s condition. Some of you have gotten a chance to briefly talk to our brother, Sam, and others have heard the news through the grapevine. To begin with, he’s not on life support, and as far as I know, he’s not in a coma either; I’ve not heard the word used by any of his doctors or nurses, and although I’ve never been to med school, I think there’s a difference between “in a coma” and “unconscious.” As far as I’ve heard from his primary physicians, he’s just unconscious. He’s being heavily sedated, and to my understanding, the medicine is a big part of what is keeping him asleep. I hope that clears up some of the stories that have been floating around; here are all the other details about what happened:

The accident happened on Tuesday, at about 10 or 11 in the morning. Mike was biking way too fast down Airport Road next to the police station when his tire hit a curb and he flipped over headfirst. Most of the shock was absorbed by the part of his brain called section 8 (or something like that) which is a section deep in the middle of his brain, and the main concern right now is that the shock didn’t spread to any other parts of his brain.

There is some swelling, and the next 48-72 hours are really critical in making sure that the swelling doesn’t get any worse; if it does, Mike could stroke, and that could be fatal. So far, however, the swelling is at a great level and hasn’t changed much at all over the past couple days. The doctors have been monitoring him very closely, and they seem to be optimistic about his continued healing. He is scheduled for an MRI sometime tomorrow, and that test will tell us how extensive the damage to his brain is. We really won’t know anything until the results from that come back. The doctors haven’t been able to tell us when he’ll wake up, how long it’ll take him to recover (he’ll definitely need occupational and physical therapy), and if there will be any changes in his behavior or learning abilities afterwards. They keep telling us that there have been many cases similar and worse than Mikey’s where the patients have fully recovered and return to their old selves with zero complications; however, each person is different and there really isn’t any telling how Mike will come out of this.

When he was first admitted to the hospital, Mike’s body was seizing as a reaction to the shock of the impact. The doctors put him on anti-seizure medication, and he’s been off of it for a while now; all his brain waves and signals are normal and looking good. Mikey was also moving his left side around a lot (involuntarily, but at least he was moving), but he began to run a fever so they put cooling pads on his chest and legs. He started shivering, though, so they gave him a paralytic to keep him from moving and using all of his energy on shivering. They’re bringing up his temperature now, though, so they can get him off the paralytic and see if he’s still moving his arms and legs. They’ve also found that when the body is unstressed and at a comfortable temperature, MRI and other scan results are clearer and more accurate.

Other than his head injury, Mike also fractured his left wrist, may have torn his ACL in his left knee, and has a possible cracked sternum. He’s also pretty bruised up and his face is still a bit swollen. He’s in a bad place right now, but doing well considering. He looked a lot better than he did yesterday, and we’re hoping that things just keep getting better from here on out. As I said earlier, though, we can’t really do anything until the MRI results come back, and it could be as late as Saturday that we find out what’s going on; I have no idea how long it takes to analyze these things. Brain injuries are never good news, but all in all we're hopeful.

we were getting daily updates, which had been relatively positive, about an mri, brain swelling subsiding, breathing machine being turned off, some movement in both sides of his body. unfortunately it isn't all good news.

this is today's update:

Today was a bit of a step backwards for Mikey. The neurology team talked to my parents and told them that the MRI actually revealed some more damage in his brain; I'm not sure how the doctors missed it the first time around, but they told us that the extensive damage accounts for the minimal movement on Mikey's right side. Also, they're somewhat afraid that the fidgeting in Mike's left leg and arm aren't as purposeful as we thought. There's no good way to communicate with him because when the therapists ask him to squeeze their hands to answer their questions, it's difficult to tell if his squeezes are responses or just involuntary movements. The neuro team is supposed to run several tests on him tomorrow to figure out the best way to communicate with him and figure out what kind and how much therapy he'll need. I'm going to talk to the neuro team tomorrow morning, so once I find out all the details from them, I'll be able to tell you more about what's going on.

please pray for mike.