First of all, a special thank you to those of you who have been faithfully praying for us and even giving generously to sustain us during this tough time. I was moved to tears when my wife told me about a young girl who actually donated to us from her own piggy bank when I first had the stroke. May God bless you more then we could ever repay you.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I want you to know that if you have contributed to us in prayer or financially, we have tried our best to be good stewards of your gracious gifts. We have tried to buy everything on sale and we have been double tithing on income we receive.
But because of the amazing generosity of some of you (and because I’m a tight wad), we are able to consider a new application of a drug commonly known as Embrel. A doctor in Florida has an international patent on using this drug, known by its generic name as Etanercept, in order to help stroke patients and other people with brain injuries. He does this by injecting it into the neck so as to allow the drug to enter the brain, thus reducing inflammation. Some of the patients respond in near miraculous ways. If your’re you’re interested in seeing this drug in action, check out the 60 Minutes Australia program by clicking this link. https://youtu.be/_Yaaa-5NAX4
We spoke with the doctor at length and he feels very optimistic that I would benefit in many ways (e.g. balance, strength, brain fog, depression, stiffness, numbness, bladder and bowel movements, speech, fatigue, pain, all these and more should improve.)
Unfortunately, he did say that the two special areas of concern for me (fingers and vocal chords) are the most difficult to recover from in my kind of stroke and he was not as hopeful in these areas. Still, nothing is impossible for our God.
In any case, we wanted to humbly ask for your prayers as we embark on a cross country trip with two little ones in tow. Our trip is scheduled during my wife’s Spring Break, March 19th. The doctor recommends 2 shots, 1 week apart. It will be a major ordeal and extremely costly. There is no insurance for this kind of thing and the doctor has a monopoly and charges astonishingly high prices.
After much prayer, we feel it is necessary for our family to at least, “give it a shot.”
Would you please pray for us? There are SO many obstacles and challenges in front of us. Covid just complicates everything.
Thank you for your gracious support.
Tim, Lillian, Micah and Jojo