Chris Johnson sends along a prayer request from a friend of his:

I've decided not to post anymore about Vicky's illness on the blog, but there are a few of you who I thought might like an update.

The story so far...

After suddenly starting to lose weight, turning completely yellow and have her abdomen swell to the point where she looks like she's eight months pregnant with twins, we are back into medical nightmare mode. Although they knew that what caused her episode last year was an auto-immune reaction, they never figured out why it happened. As a result, they had to take a shotgun approach to treatment and put her on a tremendous amount of antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and steroids. Now the GI doctor believes this may have set off Auto-Immune Hepatitis. She is, as he repeatedly tells us, gravely ill. Her liver is hardly functioning, her thyroid is only going at about 50% of what it should be, her iron levels are off the charts and her coagulation factors are so low that he can't do a liver biopsy for fear that she would bleed to death. On our last visit, he pretty much laid it out for us and said that either she gets better over a period of weeks or thing go downhill quickly. He's given her a 50% chance of making it to a point of where they could start looking at other treatment options ( i.e. liver transplant). We are, to use a cliche, quite literally taking things day by day.

At this point, she is still home, although we are obviously watching her very closely. She's very weak, which is compounded by the fact that she has to make a daily choice between eating and being in horrible pain (further compounded by the fact that they can't give her anything for pain because of the liver). I'm working mostly from home for now since I don't like her to be alone for extended periods of time.

Father, hear our prayer for Vicky's complete healing, through Jesus Christ our Lord. St. Luke, pray for her. Blessed Mother Mary, pray for her.