March 18 A special note to all of Gracie’s friends either from school or from church.

The following was written just after Grace came out of ICU. I have wanted her to read the content before posting it here. Much has happened since then and now I have the time to add this information to the blog. I hope this may answer some of your questions and give you some understanding as to the limited amount of detail we told you at the time. Please continue to praise God with us for Grace's recovery, and remember "this is the day that the LORD has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it."  Just one day at a time. God bless you all.   :)

This blog was set up Christie mainly for your benefit. We know that you all love Grace and have been very interested in her in her progress.  We will admit that we have tried to keep the details to a level that wouldn’t freak you all out and make you worry unnecessarily or if the worst came to the worst that you would grieve ahead of time.

Now that Gracie is out of ICU and making good progress we would like to fill you in on how greatly God has blessed us and you by allowing Gracie to live.

As you know all this started very suddenly on Wed 15 Feb. She complained of her face feeling numb. She was dizzy and had double vision. As the night progressed she also became very wobbly on her feet.

Thurs 16 Feb

The doctor sent us straight to hospital. After many, many blood tests and an MRI scan we found that Gracie’s brain stem was swollen in the region that controls vital things like blood pressure, heart rate, breathing and consciousness. These vital signs were continually monitored.

Fri 17 Feb

At 3am Gracie was admitted and moved to Neuro High Dependency Unit. Many more blood tests later it was decided to do a Lumbar Puncture. By taking some of her spinal fluid they would be able to do a whole range of other tests. Trying to determine what she was actually fighting. By this time Christie and Jonnie had arrived from Bathurst and Yr 13. (I add this info for reasons you will see later) After the Lumbar Puncture her consciousness decreased and the heads of ICU wanted to become involved so that they could put her on life support. They did this to keep all those vital things working so that Gracie’s body would have time to fight the infection, whatever it was, and once it was beaten she would still be with us to tell the tale herself.

Some time after she had been moved to ICU it was decided that Gracie would need to have a drain and monitor inserted into her brain so that the pressures in her brain could be monitored.  By this stage Greg and Josh had arrived. So off she went and the 5 of us prayed and committed our dearly beloved Gracie into the hands of the loving Lord Jesus.

Sat 18 Feb

Gracie had a CT scan today to check that the drain/monitor was in the right place. Still more blood tests… I’m a bit amazed that she has any blood left!! But it’s encouraging to know that the part of her body that makes her blood is working fine!! The CT scan also showed that the lower part of the brain that sits in a boxish sort of thing seemed to be a bit tight. This area doesn’t really allow the brain to swell without damaging the brain itself. So we had another conference with the doctors. This time all of us were there. Us 5 plus our very special daughter in law, Kellie, and Number 1 son in law, Neil. So the decision to allow the doctors to remove a small part of the back of Gracie’s skull to let the brain have swelling room was made by us all, and everyone got to ask their own questions. It seemed to be such a long operation, much longer than they had said, until we found out that there had been an emergency caesarean that pushed Gracie’s op back. This op went very well.

Sun 19 Feb

What happened this day?

Mon 20 Feb

Now Gracie was back in ICU on life support. The machines were breathing for her and medication was keeping her heart rate and blood pressure what they should be. The monitor in her brain was doing its job and if the pressures got too high they were able to relieve the pressure using the drain. Still more blood tests, still no answers. All this time, really since coming into emergency, she had been on antibiotics, antivirals and steroids just to cover everything they could thing of that might be the cause. At this point Gracie was sedated to keep her comfortable, so she was pretty unaware of what was going on around her. Josh came and got me in the evening and he was able to read Romans 8 to her. One of her favourite passages of scripture and so fitting in this case.

Tues 21 Feb

Today she had a trip out of ICU to have a MRI to check on the swelling in her brain stem. The results of this scan showed that the swelling/infection had spread upwards. It is not known if this was the peak of the infection or whether it would continue upwards. I’m now assuming that it might have been the peak as she seems to have improved since then. Josh, Jonnie and I had opportunity to go to see her in the evening and we were once again able to pray to our loving God asking Him to heal her if that was His will. Above all we wanted His will, as we know that this is always best. But having said that, we also told Him that we dearly want to keep our Gracie here with us. She is such a blessing and God willing she will be used for His glory in the days that lie ahead.

Wed 22 Feb

It was now time to reduce her sedation and get her to wake up so that it could be seen if she could hear and respond to commands. At one point Josh said, ‘Mum she’s crying.’ Sure enough there were tears running out of her eye. We asked her she was in pain. She was able to nod ‘Yes’. What is a headache? Shake ‘No’. Was her tummy sore? ‘No’. Was it her throat? She tried to point with her hand and nodded, ‘Yes’. Wonderful we could get her some pain relief and knew that she could hear and comprehend. Very exciting day!! But still we didn’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves. When you don’t know what you’re dealing with you don’t know what it will do. Will she continue to improve? Will she go backwards? We just didn’t know. It was hard not to get our hopes raised and we didn’t want you guys to have the same velocity on the roller coaster as us. Also we are not sure how much Gracie would have liked you to know. She does love and care for you all too. Also today Gracie had a full body scan. This one was to rule out any cancers.

Thurs 23 Feb

Still no idea on what the cause is. The scan from yesterday appears to be clear, but the final results are not in as yet. Hopefully tomorrow will tell us more. We are also waiting on results from places like Brisbane. Sometimes they even send sample off to Oxford for tests. How amazing is all this wonderful medical stuff. Kellie’s sister in law, Billie, also works at the hospital and so she will often get updates that she can pass on to us. One encouraging one was, ‘Please make sure the family knows that just because we haven’t found a cause doesn’t mean that we have stopped looking. We are doing everything we can to find something.’ Also it’s comforting to know that Billie really knows the calibre of the doctors that the Lord has placed on Gracie’s case. They are the best.

Gracie’s sedation has continued to be reduced and hopefully tomorrow she will have her breathing tube removed, as she is mainly breathing on her own now. Praise God for such wonderful improvement. Every time she comes to though she gets agitated to find tubes everywhere and tries to pull them out, so they still have her on some calming medication. But hopefully once the tube is out, it really can’t be too comfortable, she will not be agitated any more and will be able to start to eat and drink by herself again. Also today I was able to start playing her some music. Today is was my playlist. Tomorrow I will take her iPod. J

Fri 24 Feb