The Best-Laid Plans of Mice and Men

Wow, this was a crazy week! For those of you who don't know, Casey was suppossed to leave to go to India this past Friday (June 6th). One of our supporters heads up the international recruiting department at the University of Central Oklahoma and makes regular trips to India to seek out new students. He invited Casey to join him on this trip and was really eager to have Casey see the country with him.

All the plans were laid, the tickets bought, vaccines injected, visa purchased . . . and then two nights before he was to head out of town, something unexpected happened.

On Tuesday, Casey started to experience pain in his back and stomach. The pain persisted off and on throughout the day until about 6:30 p.m. when it suddenly became excruciating. We thought about going up to the emergency room right then but a few minutes later the pain had subsided. But, it didn't stay gone for long. By about 10 p.m. the pain was back in full force. We decided we'd better head to the emergency room and figure out what was going on.

A CAT scan revealed Casey had a 4mm kidney stone that was in the early stages of its trip out of his body. After treating Casey's pain and getting him hydrated through an IV, the ER doctor sent us home with several prescriptions and a warning that attempting to go to India in a few days would be "tricky."

The next day was really bad. After about 8 hours of horrible pain at home, we finally headed back to the ER to get stronger pain relief. The prospects for the trip to India weren't looking promising.

Thursday morning Casey was still struggling with nausea, exhaustion and intervals of pain, so he decided to forgo joining his friend on the trip to India.

He was a bummed to miss out on the opportunity, but we trust that God had a reason for the way things happened and are thankful that the kidney stone didn't appear a few days later while he was already in India.

Today Casey has still been battling pain but not as severe as before. We're hoping that he's almost at the end of this thing.

Please keep him in your prayers.