My uncle and her had recently moved back from Tulsa OK, so we saw them much more than in the past and each time it was very apparent that she was going down hill fast.  She went to Minneapolis soon after we saw her and they confirmed that her liver was under severe distress and gave her medication to stabilize her and reduce the toxicity in her system.  Her liver was not properly removing the toxins from her body and that was causing her to have difficulty thinking and speaking.  After spending time in Minneapolis and getting on the right combination of drugs, we noticed some improvement in her condition.  Through out 2007 her health was like a roller coaster, as soon as it seemed things were improving she would suffer another setback.  By Labor Day things looked extremely grim, she wasn't a good candidate for a liver transplant since she was 70 years old, but her liver was deteriorating very quickly.  Doctors in Minneapolis told her the best chance for survival was to find a family member who could donate a portion of their healthy liver to her.   This procedure is called a Living Donor Transplant. 

"With a living donor transplant, a healthy person donates part of his or her liver to the recipient. This procedure has been increasingly successful and shows promise as a solution to the shortage of liver donors. It is becoming the most frequent option in children, partly because child-sized livers are in such short supply."

Over the next couple months however, her condition grew much worse.  No one in her immediate family offered to even be tested for compatibility to be a living donor.  An immediate family member is preferred because the odds of rejection are much lower.  She went in the hospital just before Thanksgiving and was extremely weak.  After Thanksgiving, my mother went to Bismarck to spent a few days with her.  When it came time to say goodbye they both cried because inside they knew this would probably be the last time they saw each other.  She was very sick and exhausted from a long battle.   That night my mother called me when she got home and asked me to pray for aunt Marian.  She told me how sick she had become and how they had both broke down in tears when she left the hospital.  I reassured her that Marian was going to be ok and asked her to focus on spending time with her at the lake next summer.

That night as I was falling asleep, I began to focus on Marian.  I visualized myself placing one hand on the top of her head and the other hand on her side above her liver.  Then I began to talk to God and ask that his loving energy would repair the damaged cells in Marians body and bring them back to their original state of perfection.  As I said this, I would visualize the healing power of God flowing between my two hands and through her body.  I continued this until a warm nice feeling came over me and I fell asleep.

The next morning I received a call from my mother informing me that her doctor had decided overnight to have her air-lifted back to Minneapolis for more aggressive treatment.  She took a "Life Flight" that morning and was back in the hospital in Minneapolis that afternoon.  Over the next couple days I continued to do that evening routine and on Friday my wife and I were scheduled to leave town for a few days.  Just as we were getting ready to leave for the airport my mother called with good news, Marian was scheduled to have a Liver Transplant the following morning!   Wow!  That was incredible news that was really quite unexpected.  The only glitch was a snow storm that was moving into the area, but I told mom not to worry.... everything was going the way it was supposed to and nothing would stop it.

By the time we got up and called home the next day, Marian had received her new liver.  The first week was extremely critical so I told mom to focus on her liver healing and I did the same.  There were several scares and problems along the way because she had been so sick and weak at the time of the transplant, but by late February she was standing in front of me looking better than she had in a couple years!

Now some people will say that God had nothing to do with Marian's recovery, but if you would've experienced the dramatic shift first hand you would know better.  Up to that point each time they stablized her things progressively got worse.  They would shuffle her around between hospitals and doctors so much that her medicines would constantly get mixed up and she would relapse quicker than the time before.  Once God's powerful healing energy was involved, things moved very fast and she had a new liver within days.