My Valentine of Love

Oregon is facing the challenges of a huge snowstorm. We live down a long, long country road driveway and we haven't been able to leave the house since Friday. 

And on Thursday, I learned that my brother Doug, of Eagle River, Alaska was put on a ventilator and into a medially induced coma.

This is the second time in just 2 years that my brother has been rushed by paramedics to Providence Hospital in Anchorage unable to breathe from severe cases of pneumonia. 

What is a worried sister, whose heart is filled to bursting with love and prayers to do?

I could go crazy with worry or I could do all that I know how to do to send my prayers, and postive thoughts across the miles. And for me, staying positive means staying very, very busy. So what did I do?  

I made another prayer flag and hung it outside in the polar freeze, of course. 

In 2012, I followed him through 3 states and 4 hospitals and we got an amazing miracle of miracles back then. He lived when doctors said he wouldn't  and he came back to us, bit by bit over the next 6 months. 

We had to use a medical transport jet back in 2012 and medevac him down to Harborview Hospital in Seattle, where I lived in a hotel for a full week, walking up to 32 blocks a day (I got lost a lot!) to visit him and his wife Becky, who had fallen her very first day there to see Doug, and broke her pelvis, and had to be hospitalized there, as well.  Becky, besides having osteoporosis, also suffers from severe kidney failure and needs dialysis three times a week for four hours at a time.

Bit by bit, amazing miracles happened..ones that all dozens and dozens of his doctors just shook their heads in disbelief and some even acknowledged that yes, miracles do happen.

But the MRSA pneumonia scarred his lungs and now he has his 3rd repeat of an attack the underlying weakened immune system, and has developed a propensity towards pneumonia.

So, here we are once again. Facing another heart rending and most challenging place with him on a ventilator and in a medically induced coma......all over again. 

This time, I am snowed in with few flights going out of Portland, and our other brothers all in crisis with their own wives. Doug's wife is in end stage kidney failure as of 2010, desperately staying alive with dialysis, three times a week in Anchorage.

My youngest SIL was diagnosed with Stage 4 Small Cell Carcinoma (lung cancer) in late October and has now had 4 rounds of Chemo where they fly from Juneau to Seattle every 3 weeks. Her next treatment will be February 20th. My other SIL just had foot surgery and her husband is caring for her as she cannot walk on it for 6 more weeks.

And my only other brother, with a fairly healthy wife is in Seattle at a conference..also snowed in.  And yes, we just keep coping and dealing and doing what we need to do for ourselves and in my case, everyone else.

And I deal by keeping as busy as I possibly can and creating openings for prayers and miracles to flow through. And one of those ways is by making and flying prayer flags and all of their heartfelt wishes across the miles.

With just a few scraps of polar fleece leftover from my project of making fleece neck warmers, I made this little prayer flag filled with love!   Now, we might not have penguins in either Oregon or Alaska, unless you count our zoo's, but he is on my flag with his February Valentine and lots of love for my brother, Doug, my sister-in-law, Becky and all of their family and ours.


Big, big hug and lots and lots of love across the frozen miles!  Please take a moment and send positive and healing thoughts to my brother, as well.   Thank you.

  
Previous Link Ups to My Brother's Story of Many Miracles...Please let there be another one!!!

Praying for a Miracle and Blessings: Updated 2014

Crisis
Providence Alaska Medical Center
Providence, Divine and Otherwise
Song of the Hills and an Air Flight Medevac to Seattle
Salem to Sisters to Seattle
One Miracle at a Time
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
Update 2012..many updates added to this last 2012 post
Final Update on Praying for a Miracle 2013   2014 (this post) 

I'm a Member of  The Prayer Flag Project

Michele Bilyeu blogs With Heart and Hands as she shares a quilting journey through her life in Salem, Oregon and Douglas, Alaska. Sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, with small format art quilts, prayer flags, and comfort quilts for a variety of charitable programs. And best of all, sharing thousands of links to Free Quilt and Quilt Block Patterns and encouraging others to join her and make and donate quilts to charitable causes.   Help us change the world, one little quilt, art quilt, and prayer flag at a time!