Prayer Update and Request

A reader writes:

I am so grateful for all the prayer for Micheal, my 14 year old nephew who shot himself in the head after a bad day at school on the Wed before Easter. One inexplicable detail: the CAT scan showed that the bullet missed his cerebral cortex by going around it and then exiting as though it went in a straight line. the CAT scan clearly shows the impossible path of the bullet around that crucial center of his brain. Doctors cannot explain it and just say, “someone up there must really like this boy”

Michael has come such a long way since I first asked for prayer. He is now conscious during the day although it is often in a kind of “twilight sleep” the way people do drift off to sleep when they are bored or in the hospital an needing to heal. He has given his nurses the ‘thumbs up’ by rolling his hand over with his thumb extended some, when they ask him to do it, and he has tracked the nurse around the room with his eyes and even turns his head some to see where people are in the room. He will try to squeeze people’s hands when asked to do it, or when, it seems, he doesn’t want someone to go.
the doctor are quite amazed at his progress. At one point bout a week after his injury, he was in immediate danger of death (as he had pneumonia as well as forceful diarrhea in addition to the bullet wound in his brain) and on the day it seemed he was in the worst trouble, my brother allowed me to baptize him and I used a small vial of Lourdes Water that I had gotten one for my birthday last year.
The concerns right now are for his body to produce less spinal fluid. The doctors would like to remove the shunts in his head because while they are necessary to drain the excess fluid and keep the pressure in his head lower, they are also a conduit for staph or strep which would cause a most serious infection. But they cannot remove them with the amount of fluid his body is making. They may have to put in a shunt that routes the fluid into his abdomen, but that is major surgery and they’d prefer not to do that so our prayers now, besides increased brain and body function is that his body will produce less fluid, enough to keep his brain and spine healthy, but not enough to cause pressure on his brain. He already had the bone covering the right side of his head removed because of the pressure and swelling he had. (that bone is frozen and will be replaced in a few months if his healing continues to progress to the place where he can leave the hospital. )
I am most grateful for all the prayer for Michael and his family and ask that those prayers continue. He is making such amazing progress, a real miracle. he is three weeks, heading to a month still alive. when he was taken to the hospital, my brother was told Michael only had a 5% chance of living through the first three days because of the amount of damage he had done to himself. He’s made it past three weeks and we are heading to the fourth week. he is doing so much better than any of his doctors expected he would or could. We are all so thankful.

Father, hear our prayer for his continued and complete healing in body, soul, and spirit. Give his caregivers grace, wisdom, compassion, skill, and knowledge and give all who love him grace, peace, and strength. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Mother Mary and St. Luke, pray for them.