Since we know many of you are praying for us (and we appreciate it VERY MUCH!!!!) we would like you to know the latest updates…
Our good news is that Miriam’s blood clot is gone. There are still some leftover problems and our doctor said that she will have to be on blood thinners for at least four more months. But after that she should be fine. The only problem is that her blood should be checked often and they are not very good at doing that here in Ukraine. We do not know why but so many times the doctors here seem not to worry about any “potential” problems. Somehow they are not interested in preventing problems; they only deal with them when they come… But still, it’s great that the blood clot has dissolved!!!! Praise the Lord for that!!!
Our bad news is that Miriam had an ultrasound done on her remaining ovary today and there is a big cyst again!!!! :( Not only is it disappointing (we were somehow not emotionally prepared for this news) but now there is also a big question mark on whether Miriam can travel or not. You probably understand that we are trying to be super careful since she already lost one ovary recently. Her left ovary also had cysts and it twisted and then had to be removed even though Miriam did everything she could to prevent it… She was really careful, she was mostly at home resting etc… We had been told that if she does those things, it would not happen, but it did… So now, since she only has one ovary left, we are really thinking about what to do because we want to do everything possible to prevent any more problems.
But at the same time we really want to leave Ukraine ASAP. After all our bad experience we do not really trust the system here anymore. All the doctors and nurses are all really nice and we really like them as people but they have given us so much wrong advice plus they are very limited in what they can do equipment-wise, lab-wise etc… that we just feel like we need to seek medical help somewhere else…
On Saturday we are going to see a different doctor (who is supposedly very good) and hopefully he is going to help us decide whether it is safe for Miriam to travel right now or not. We were supposed to fly to the Czech Republic on Saturday but that will have to be postponed now.
When you are praying for us, please pray that we know what to do next!!!! First we need to know if Miriam can travel… but if she can travel, we need to know where to go… At first we hoped to take care of all our medical problems in the Czech Republic. But then couple different things fell through… couple different accommodation options in Prague did not work out… a doctor we wanted to see gave us the earliest appointment for March 13 etc etc… So when we learned that Samaritan Ministries (we are members) would cover our medical expenses if we came to the States, we were considering coming back to Minnesota for a month or so. In fact many things seemed to fall in place much easier with the option of coming back to Minnesota than going to Prague… There would be a place for us to stay, our clinic confirmed that they would be able to take care of both the ovary problem and the blood thinning problems, Miriam would be able to see a very nice Christian doctor etc… Our only concern was that if for some reason our medical bills got really high, we need to be 100% sure that Samaritan Ministries will really cover them all. But Tomasz called them again today and they again said that they will cover everything related to the cysts, the surgery and the blood clot problems…
So please pray for wisdom and very special God’s guidance for us. At this point we are really exhausted and feel really helpless. It feels like whenever things finally seem to be getting better or we finally feel like we know what we are doing, something happens and we are back to square one…
We appreciate you all very much!!! Happy Valentine’s Day! :)
Tomasz and Miriam
