This has been going on for a week now, and it doesn't appear that it will be overwith anytime soon.

My beautiful wife, Raisa, was laughing, talking, enjoying life one minute; the next, boom!  She was fighting for her life.  She's now in the hospital, in a coma, in the Intensive Care ward.  The doctors said it was some kind of "overwhelming bacterial infection"; they even had a name for it:  necrotizing fasciitis.  She also had sepsis, or overwhelming infection of her bloodstream.  She was desperately sick.

A tiny, unassuming cut was what started it.  She'd nicked her ankle accidentally while shaving; that night, she became extremely ill and was in excruciating pain, so much, in fact, she had me take her to the emergency room. 

The head doctor in the ER took one look at her swollen, red leg and said one word:  "Surgery!" 

Now she lies somewhere between life and death, hooked up to a whole forest of tubes, monitors recording her lifesigns.  Nurses scurry back and forth, providing the best of care, and doctors still don't have any answers.  I have been running to and from the hospital to see Raisa, and every day it's the same.  Nobody knows anything, and it's gotten me scared to death.

The children clearly miss their mother.  Every day, little Ivan and his older sister, Ivanka, ask when mama is coming home.  I tell them, "Not yet; she is still very sick.  Pray."  It's tearing my heart in two because they really don't understand what's going on except that their mama might die because she is so sick.  It will be a while before she is out of the hospital if she managees to survive, which, at this point and time, seems rather uncertain.

If I don't go to the hospital to see my wife, my brother, William, does.  Every time he gets ready to leave to see her, I always tell him the same thing:  "Go tell her I love her."

Then William comes home a while later to tell me the latest developments; most of what I hear isn't good, and it makes me worry even more for my wife.

*To be continued.*