Bryan Michael Carnavale

We are so happy to welcome our little angel, Bryan, into our home. He was born June 16th and weighed 7 lbs 10 oz. He was born just 7 minutes after they wheeled me into the delivery room (12 min. after we arrived to the hospital). Thank heavens we made it to the hospital in time! Luckily, everything worked out and I lived through one of my biggest fears--delivering a baby with no epidural or pain medication.

Ana Elisa is a proud sister and is very good with her little brother. We are so blessed to have two such wonderful children.

It's Time for Africa...

I still need to download our pictures from the last several months, so when I do, I'll put a family update on--maybe by then we'll have had Bryan and we can post some pictures of our new little

angel.

In the meantime, here is a tribute to Emerson's team. With the World Cup here, he is all smiles! 30 days of pure heaven has started for most of the world, including Emerson :) He can't wait for Byran to be born so that he can say he saw the 2010 World Cup. Ana Elisa already knows how special it is to daddy and she loves it!

REHAB

Today was mom's first full day of rehab. I spent the whole day at the hospital and watched the whole thing. Let me tell you, this intense rehab is not for the faint of heart. And it can be difficult to watch at times as her mind and body are pushed to their limits. By watching the physical and occupational therapists, speech therapists, psychologists, respiratory therapists, etc. work with mom, you see how much the aneurysm and strokes really affected both her mind and body.

My dad sent this e-mail out to some of the family yesterday, so I thougth I'd just copy and paste it for a quick update to everyone else:

Today has been a remarkable day. We appreciate the faith and prayers of all those who have been helping us and praying for us. Today Martha was able to successfully pass her rehab review and to be accepted into IMC's Acute Rehab program. She is now in room 1218 in the Sorenson Patient Tower. and can see visitors after her "work day ends about 4-4:30 PM. We will need to see how exhausted she is and gage how many visitors she can handle up to about 8PM. It has now been 25 days since she suffered her Aneurysm and the stroke that followed that up when they coiled the artery in order to save her life. We have spent 18 days in ICU and 7 days in rehab preparation and I cannot say enough praise about the staff from top to bottom at the IMC hospital.

Rehab here is very intense for the patients and they will be pushed continually beyond their limits so that they can advance and relearn skills in order to be able to go home in 3 - 6 weeks. Tomorrow ( Friday ), is Martha's 1st day on her new rehab schedule, so I am going to spend the day helping her adjust to the new schedule. When we get closer to moving her home, the training and rehab will be as much for us as it is for her in order to train us how to help her adjust to her new limitations, whatever they turn out to be.

Today in her first Physical rehab session they finally figured out that the blindness she has encompasses is about 60% or if you were to look at the opposite wall side to side and call that a 180 degree view she is seeing only about 75% of the 180 degrees, all of it to the right. So the first thing the Physical Therapist needs to do is to help her align back to center. She leans to the right and stares to the right because in her mind that is straight up at this point.

In about a week after they have a better idea of some of the long term challenges she will face they will have an Occupational Therapist come to the home with some recommendations on what we need to do to make the home suitable for her usage. At that point we might ask for some assistance from some of you to do what we need to do on the home.

Anyway, from where we were on Wednesday morning, 1 hour short of discharge and being sent to a convalescent center, and now back on schedule with what is probably the best rehab center in the Mountain West is a real blessing. We all petitioned the Lord, to bless us with this opportunity, while at the same time promising the Lord we would be happy with whatever was best for her.

This experience has strengthened my testimony of the Love and Personal interest of a kind and loving Heavenly Father who does hear and answer prayers. Again we know there will be challenges, but so far Martha is in remarkably good spirits and is being a real trooper in facing and accepting the situation for what it is.

Mom is out of ICU!

Today they finally moved mom out of the ICU. She will be on the rehab floor now. She still can't move any limbs other than her right arm, and she still can't talk (part of that is because she has the trachial tube in her throat). She is still very tired and very weak, and seems to be in another world a lot of the time, but she looks so much better.

We've seen a lot of miracles and hope to see many more in the coming days and weeks. Yesterday they sat her up for 2 hours, it wore her out for the rest of the day, but it sure was a big leap forward.

Update on Mom

Mom made a lot of progress over the weekend. She began to respond to us by nodding or shaking her head lightly, she would lift a finger when asked to do so, etc. It was so exciting, and our hopes for her recovery soared.

Yesterday we hit a bump in the road when they decided to take out her breathing tube. They didn't know, but her vocal cords and throat were so swollen that when they took the tube out, the swelling blocked her airways and she began to struggle for air. It was a painful, tramatic experience as she struggled for breath for ten minutes while they tried to re-insert the tube. She had a lot of complications after that which left us really worried.

Today, despite her 104 degree fever, she did remarkably well. She began responding again and even kicked her right leg several times during her physical therapy session. It goes to show what a fighter mom is.

The worry right now is that the threat of vasal spasms (sp?) is high (vasal spasms are when the veins in your brain constrict, not allowing blood to flow through them, causing more strokes). This morning they found some brain wave activity that indicates that there she is in high threat and so not only are they monitering her closely, they are also keeping her blood pressure really high (today they had her diastolic pressure between 160 and 180). This causes the veins to have to open up because of the increased flow of blood running through them. It's scary to have that high blood pressure, but even scarier to think of the effects more strokes would cause her.

Tonight the doctor told my dad that they are afraid to take the ventilator tube out again for fear of her not being able to breathe again, so they have decided to insert a temporary trachial tube tomorrow. They feel that the only way her throat and vocal cords will heal are if they remove the tube. We are praying that this procedure will go smoothly and will help mom continue on her road to recovery.

My mom is still battling for her life, so we still need all the prayers we can get in her behalf. Thank you to all of you who have put her name in the temple and have kept her in your prayers. I truely believe they have helped sustain her through these difficult days.

Mom, we love you!!

My mom (Martha) has been in the hospital since all week. She suffered a massive aneurysm (the nurse explained that it was a type of stroke) on Monday morning. She is in the Neuro-Critical Care Center at the IMC and will be there for quite some time. We don't know how extensive the brain damage is yet since she was just taken off of sedation yesterday and it will take some time to be able to gage her cognitive state, etc.

We had a good day today as the doctor asked me to talk to her to see if she recognized my voice. When I started talking to her, she opened her eyes. I thought my heart would burst with joy as it was the first time we'd had any type of reaction from her all week. I explained to her that she is in the hospital and that we are all there for her and that we love her. She then closed her eyes and a tear ran down her cheek. I thank our Heavely Father for that small moment we shared together today. It was a bright spot to a very tough week. The doctors did remind us, however, that she is very, very sick and that we will have good days followed by bad days. They said she is still in the danger zone and each day they are in a fight to save her life.

I am here in SLC to be with my mom while Emerson and Ana Elisa are still back in AZ. I want to thank all of those wonderful people who have and are sending so much love and support during this extremely difficult time. The Lord has truely blessed us with angels for friends. We could not get through this without you all. Thank you with all of my heart.

Thank you also for your prayers for my mom. They are felt and very appreciated.

Catching Up

Here are a bunch of pictures from the last 4 months...

October 2009

November 2009

December 2009


January 2010

IT'S A BOY!

We found out today that we are having a boy!! We're so excited. Unfortunatly, they just gave us printouts of the ultrasound and we can only scan onto PDF files, so I can't post any pictures of our little boy, but we did get some really cute ones.

Hopefully soon I'll upload our pictures off of our camera and then I can update on what has been going on the last several months.

Christmas Season

Ana Elisa loves everything about the Christmas season--the lights, the music, Christmas trees, all the decorations, candy canes (especially the ones on our tree!), and getting a piece of chocolate every day from her Santa Clause advent calendar.


Christmas this year is so fun because we get to see it through the eyes of a 2 year old!! And to add to the fun, we have the gift of a new baby coming to join our family in June!! This little one is my excuse for slacking off on the blog. Hopefully this morning sickness will be over soon, since I am 12 weeks along now...

I'll try to post some pictures of some of the things I've missed sometime soon.

Our Trip to Brasil

In September, we went to Brasil to visit our family. We got to spend a lot of time with them and loved every minute of it.

We spent some time at the beach the first week we were there. Cida's (Emerson's mom) boss let us use her beach house which was in a beautiful, quiet area where there are hardly any tourists. There weren't a lot of people there, so it was really peaceful and quiet.

There's a mall near Cida's house where they had a play area, Ana Elisa had a blast there.

Ana Elisa loved playing at her Vo's (grandma's) house.

We had a barbecue at Emerson's uncle Marcos house. It was so fun to see everyone.

Four Generations!

We got to go see Emerson's dad, it was a fun afternoon.

Cida put a birthday party together for Ana Elisa. It was so fun, they went all out for it. It was a Shrek theme. Cida bought her a princess dress and made Emerson and I a Shrek and Fiona costumes for it.

We had a cake to celebrate Marco's birthday, he was a great sport and dressed up in Emerson's Shrek costume.

We're so glad to have been able to go. We miss everyone so much and hope to see them again really soon.