please pray for my friends ali and shafaq

when i want to check my favorite blogs, i usually start off here so i can just click links to those blogs instead of typing in the address bar. but it's been so long i get a shock seeing the "happy birthday musa!" post up!
well, anyway, so since i last posted, we've moved into a new house and gone to england and come back. and it all seems like a lifetime ago since my little brother ali went into the hospital last sunday. it has been such a heartwrenching week that the shock of what actually happened - a heart attack in a 25-year-old - has been sort of numbed into the past, and the fact that he got so much worse while in the hospital has eclipsed it, too. it wasn't a heart attack per se - he's more healthy than most 25 year olds - but as far as we can tell, it's something called fulminant myocarditis, which translates to a raging viral infection of the heart muscle. nobody knows how he got sick or how the virus got into his heart, but it did, and he actually went into cardiac arrest while being airlifted to the heart center at inova fairfax. and that was just the beginning...! then the virus got worse, and his fever spiked, and his heart function went down to like 20 percent, and his kidneys and liver began failing because of lack of oxygen, and he couldn't breathe and was in constant severe pain and his only sister shafaq, my dearest friend, was falling apart and breaking down left and right.
so on wednesday night they took him into surgery and attached to him a biventricular assist device - a six-hour surgery, after which he was sedated for two days and only yesterday had the intubator taken out. the VADs pump the blood for him, leaving his heart to heal on its own, and helping to keep the rest of his body supplied with the oxygen it needs. and his organ functions and heart functions seem to be improving but it's very tentative progress, he's still swollen from head to toe from surgery and very weak, still sick, still in pain. but we know now that that surgery literally saved his life, through the grace of God.
it was so inexpressibly good to see him awake yesterday, able to talk even if weakly, even to see some of his sense of humor coming back. but i am also still worried about shafaq, who is of course committing all her energy to her baby brother and none for herself.
so... if you read this post, please include shafaq and ali and their family in your prayers! i'm off now and will post more later... must do a musa update! my boy is talking now, sentences and everything, it's so much fun :)