A Plea for Prayers

I find it much more difficult to write in my blog when I'm at my parents' house. This happens for several reasons. First of all, I'm usually pretty busy helping my mom do something around the house. Normally I'm kept busy doing this or that cleaning project, washing dishes, vacuuming, picking up the living room etc. Along with all the cleaning, I'm also often occupied with entertaining children, especially if my siblings also happen to be around, which is fine because I love the kids. I might also be busy chatting with my siblings, getting my trash kicked at Hearts (well I almost won the other night, but last night I got beaten rather badly) or even watching Animaniancs. The gist of this whole paragraph is that being at my parents' house keeps me occupied, and it's harder when I don't have my own computer. In fact, I should probably be helping with the dinner dishes right now, but here I am, writing in my blog instead. . .

I'm sort of writing because it's been a stressful last few days. My dad woke up in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve with terrible pain in his back. He spent most of Christmas Day sleeping (doped up on what pain pills my mom had), as a means of dealing with the pain. However, it's now three days later, and he's still in terrible pain. We think it's very possible, and in fact likely, that a cyst he had removed from his spine about 7 years ago has come back. My mom is at her wits end trying to figure out what to do to help him, and the truth is there's not really much she can do except pray hard. She gets stressed out when there's a problem she can't fix, and she's a worrier, both traits I have inherited from her.

In desperation my parents went to the emergency room at the hospital in Burley yesterday. The verdict was: the doctor couldn't do anything to help them because my dad needs an MRI and, get this, the hospital's MRI machine is broken and has been for a week!! The closest hospital is in Twin Falls, about 40 minutes from here, and the doctor said it wouldn't help for him to send my parents there because they'd have to pay another emergency room visit. He suggested my parents try to get ahold of the surgeon in Boise who did the surgery before. In the meantime, my poor father is suffering and in terrible pain. My mom's also a basket case trying to deal with the stress, and have her tiny house overrun with her family. I suppose it's just as well that my sister and brother in law and their family and me are going to be heading back to Utah tomorrow.

The point of this post is to ask for your prayers for my dad, and for my mom too. I hope you don't mind this request. However, I think at this point prayer is pretty much the only thing that can help my dad, so if you think about it, please do so. Thanks, everyone!