Charlie Graves’ Medical Bills
Charlie and Julia Graves have been our friends for many years. They are wonderful people with a deep love for the Lord. I’m setting up this fundraiser for them to help with medical bills, as well as travel expenses for Julia, to and from the hospital to see Charlie every day! Every little bit will help them. Thank you and God bless you!
Per Julia on the Caring Bridge website, dated August 18, 2021. “Charlie went in to the University of Minnesota medical center at 5 A.M. on July 19, 2021, for quadruple bypass surgery. Things went well, and he ended up with a triple bypass instead. His heart has healed beautifully, and we are thankful to the Lord for that.
However, Charlie has had gone down a different road from his heart concerns, and it has been bumpy. Immediately after his surgery, his blood pressure dropped low, causing a mini-stroke. His recovery from the surgery, was fun, at times, with some good stories to tell him one day! Each day, we saw him becoming more alert, participating in conversation, eating well and feeding himself.
Somewhere between the night of July 24 and the morning of July 25, something happened that changed everything. I personally believe he had another stroke. He went from eating and talking to being unable to swallow a crushed pill. We have not had any substantial conversation with him since then. He does not know where he is any longer, or why, or anyone's names. He has no short-term memory. He does seem to recognize people at times, and will sometimes tear up listening to people talk, seeing pictures or listening to music.
Because Charlie tried to pull his tubes out, he had a "sitter" with him at all times for nearly 2 weeks. He has had several MRIs, CT scans, ultrasounds, spinal taps, blood tests and anything else you can imagine.
Eventually, Charlie was given a feeding tube because he was unable to swallow. He's lost a lot of weight, and his bed always seems too short! He was moved back and forth between ICU and Intermediate care, being in 7 different rooms in 3 weeks. Then, on August 1, he was diagnosed with Covid. Our visits were cut immediately, and we felt completely bereft and out of the loop. Because he's had false-positives before, we requested a re-testing. We were denied that, saying it's too difficult to determine a false positive or even a false negative. By the time we finished arguing about all that, 10 days had passed and we were allowed, 2 visitors a day, back with him. We had tried to stay in contact with Ipads and the staff was very patient and gracious with us and trying to schedule these Zoom calls.
Though Charlie does have indications of mini-strokes, they are still determining what (and what is causing) the lesions are on his brain. We are praying for something simple like inflammation on nerve endings in his brain that is hindering the messages being sent by his nerves. The near future holds another spinal test, another MRI and possibly a brain biopsy.
Whatever happens, we know that Charlie is in God's hand. Not just His hand; His right hand. Isaiah 41:10 says, "Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness."