my Dad...

Thanks to all of you for praying for my Dad after his recent accident. If you aren't familiar with what happened, i'll try to catch you up.

Friday morning my Dad got up on his roof to clean it off...something he has done countless times before. Thursday afternoon had brought some rain, so the roof was a little damp, was cluttered with leaves and sticks, and had a little algae growing on it, so getting up on the roof Friday morning was more than a little treacherous.

He was on the second story roof and lost his footing and fell to his bottom and began to slide. he had a broom in one hand and a small gas powered leaf blower in the other. as he began to slide off the edge of the roof, he tried valiantly to stick the broom handle into the gutter and wasn't able to make it stick. he tumbled over the 2nd story roof onto the first floor roof of the porch and rolled right off the edge. he fell through an 8 foot holly bush (the sticker bush kind), and head first onto his back into the flower bed. the worst part is that he landed on a rock about the size of a football...and never let go of the gas powered blower!

his injuries are rather extensive: a busted shoulder (we have been told a broken clavicle, but that's not been confirmed yet), a collapsed lung, a few broken ribs, a pelvis that is cracked on both sides, and a crushed vertebrae (thoracic 12). The crushed vertebrae required emergency surgery to repair. the surgery required that his Thoracic 10th vertebrae through lumbar 5 vertebrae be fused together. the biggest problem is that when the vertebrae burst a piece of bone fragment went into the spinal cord and caused the spinal cord leak fluid. during surgery he lost quite a bit of spinal fluid and blood.

he came through surgery well, and is now out of ICU and in a room at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville.

We don't know what the long-term affects will be. He is having a hard time breathing deep and is understandably sore. The biggest issue now is that he can not feel anything below his waist and there is no way of knowing what the outcome is going to be.

Your prayers would be greatly appreciated as we learn how to deal with this. whether he can walk again or not we dont' know, but we DO know that God is in control. it's been easy to say that, but having to actually LIVE that is a little more difficult, but we DO KNOW that God is walking through this with us.

thanks for your prayers.

want to send him a get well wish? shoot me an email and i'll forward it to them.

THANKS!

-mike ><>