I know I've written some of it down, if not in blog form, in the formality of legal letters. I don't know exactly where any of it is right now, so I'll recount as of present day memory.
In August 2007, Mike knew he had another kidney stone. He hadn't been able to afford the increases of self employment health insurance premiums, so he didn't have any. His Urologist gave him medicine and advice to help him pass it on his own.
January 2008, the pain was no longer controllable and Mike had reason to be concerned that the kidney was blocked. He finally missed so much work that he could apply for Medicaid, which ended up paying almost $300,000.00 worth of bills. Before the approval, the doctor went ahead and granted medical attention. An 8 millimeter stone was hung halfway down the ureter, the tube from the kidney to the bladder.
They set up Sound Lithotripsy, external waves that break the stone apart. It was the 14th procedure he'd had in 18 years. It didn't work. It left at least half the stone. They used another procedure, Holmium Laser Treatment, where a tube is inserted up the urethra and a laser beam breaks the stone. It didn't get enough of it, so they used the Basket Procedure to grab the remaining piece.
Somewhere, somehow in the week of attempts, a hole was created in his ureter and the urine began accumulating in his scrotum, to the tune of softball size! The nurses came from far and wide to observe. Obviously, they had to find out the wheres and whys, so a CT Scan was ordered. If not for IT, I wouldn't be telling this tale today.
In the findings, the radiologist said that he "INCIDENTALLY" saw 3 AORTIC DISSECTIONS in the scan. You might wanna look that up. It's what happens before aneurysms, what the actor, John Ritter, dropped dead from on the set. I didn't understand enough about anatomy then to know that the ureter and aorta lie parallel to each other or that there was any risk at all that the unimaginable could happen. I regret now that I didn't cover it in the kind of prayer it needed. I was so used to the hassle free outpatient treatments.
Would you believe that a general surgeon was brought in, was convinced they were from Mike's car wreck in 2004, and released him to go home, AFTER I, myself, told him CT Scans with CONTRAST were done then and he'd had no internal injuries?!
Guess what, Dr. Edmiston of Boone never even requested the accident records from Ashe Hospital! He washed his and everyone else's hands of it and sent Mike on his way. Within 2 weeks even though he was still heavily medicated with morphine, Mike knew something was wrong. He was writhing in abdominal pain and losing sensation in his feet (from circulatory blockage caused by the aorta's internal lining caving in on itself).
Madalynn was only 5 weeks old, so since after midnight was when he decided he had to go, Mike drove himself to the ER in Jefferson, NC. A few hours later, he call me from LIFE FLIGHT. He was being transported to Baptist.
I have all the records: page after page of tests, results, notes, and procedures. I don't want to misrepresent here, but I also don't have time to pour over them again. All I know is Easter Sunday morning while at least 10 churches lifted him up in favor, that Dr. Geary, a premiere vascular surgeon at Wake Forest University, set out in his festive pink tie to place a stint in the aorta. 2 hours later, I got a call from the operating room. It wasn't working. They needed to replace his abdominal aorta and the iliacs.
Mike's parents were there and so was Madalynn because I was nursing. God put His hand on her that day. As I held her to my chest, she basically slept through the entire 9 hour surgery. I pondered, "Would she even know her father?" I went out on the rooftop patio beside the waiting room and performed one of those prayers I'll never forget. I made one of those "deals" we make with God. You see, Mike and I were heavily at odds with each other. He'd been progressively dosed higher and higher levels of medication through the last 6 months of my pregnancy. There are things about his pain I don't and can't understand. All I understood was how it affected "us". I told God I'd endure whatever the rest of my life held, if my children could have their father.
When the surgery was done, the generous doctor came to me to explain what he did, as 40 students observed at different intervals. They cut Mike from the sternum to the pubic bone. They jacked open his ribcage, sat his intestines on the table, stopped his heart, and commenced work to replace his aorta, which lies perilously close to the spine. They warned us that the surgery inherently causes nerve damage most of the time. And it did, BUT he LIVED. Dr. Geary drew a picture showing how badly Mike's aorta was damaged. He said it was "riddled" with 21 to 24 mm dissections, the external lining (void of its internal lining) stretched to twice its normal size, ready to explode any minute. There is no survival once the "explosion" happens. Chances of survivability of the surgery, in and of itself, to prevent the rupture are very grim.
Mike still says the most horrific part, a living nightmare, was coming back from anaesthesia breathing through what he termed a "straw". In his delirium, he thought for sure he'd suffocate. A couple of years later, he met a rare survivor of the same surgery and they BOTH agreed it was the most terrifying part of the ordeal.
Meanwhile, I was in a world of the surreal. I was floating from room to room. I didn't even know how serious it all was until it was over.
Thank God, Mike's parents took over while I tried to figure out what to do with the children, who were at home 2 hours away. I didn't have to. The church did ...not even the church we attended, but the church Megan was visiting. They arranged for payment to the hotel that shuttles to the hospital. They paid our electric bill. Another member bought us a box of groceries. Another sent us a check.
Others anonymously left things on our doorstep. Our elderly neighbors with limited income insisted that we accept $20 for gas. It broke my heart; it still does. It was such a witness to Mike ...and to the children. By the way, when you share, don't ever dismiss what it does in the heart of a child.
Mike suffered greatly. He says it was torment in the following days. They didn't believe that he required higher doses of pain killers. They wouldn't take into consideration that he'd been on morphine for 6 months already and had developed a tolerance to it. I hate that I wasn't present for him. I had to return home with the children after 2 days, while his mother and father cared for him. I can't really remember much more.
I do remember having the mattress ready downstairs by the fire place when he came home. We spent many, many hours there: Mike, Madalynn, me, and whomever else could squeeze themselves in. Megan took over; she was invaluable. They all stepped up to the plate. I also remember Miranda humbly offering the money in her meager account to help pay the mortgage. When we faced the facts that Mike would miss a grand total of half a year from his work, we placed our house for sale and found an investment buyer within a month. The kids moved all the furniture, every piece of it, into the moving truck.
They walked away from everything they knew. Megan left her flight instructor, a job she did well, a neighbor's private indoor arena she learned to ride and drive a team in, a new church family, and so much more. Shy Miranda had just begun getting involved in all kinds of activities. The 2 of them took the move the hardest. We sold our beloved Boxer, Molly, and her puppies ...and gave away every other animal but Fiona, the starving kitten Mike brought home in a paper bag from the hardware store parking lot. We sold everything we could do without: the 4 wheeler and the canoe, jewelry, artwork, furniture, yard and exercise equipment. We left 12 acres of a "lifestyle": riding trails, shooting ranges, campsites, stables and a BBQ pit they built by hand, sledding trails, and most of all the seasons - the fall leaves of our ridge, the snow that isolated us from the world, the rain showers and the mystique of the fog, and the mild summers closing out with rows of blackberries. We didn't even have an air conditioner; we had an attic fan we turned on at night. I can hear it pulling the air through the window now, blowing the curtains around and giving sweet sleep.
You know, I try not to recollect it too often because it makes me pretty teary to go back there. I thank God for letting me raise my babies in His mountains. It was never mine anyway. It was His, then it was the bank's, and then mine. Because the housing market didn't crash for a couple of more months (even so, we "lost" over $100K according to appraisal value, leaving from the meeting with just enough to make down payments for the move), there was nothing available to rent in our county that wasn't "seasonal". We wound up in the city limits of Statesville on an .18 acre plot..
We'd moved from a 3 story house, a storage building, and a barn. We quickly realized we hadn't gotten rid of enough when we unloaded 3 picnic tables and 30 snow suits, as the neighbors in the subdivision peeked through their blinds. The "Beverly Hillbillies" had surely arrived! When the kids began target practice with their compound bows, it was ratified that the hillbillies were among them, indeed.
God made room for us to do things in that place that I wouldn'tve imagined. We were right next to a soccer complex with a stream running through it. We caught crawdads there. Michael "rescued" snakes from scared, board wielding neighbors. I mean, you can take us out of the country, but you can't take the country out of us. There were sidewalks through the neighborhood, so Mike bought me a good stroller and I pushed Madalynn all over. Before long, we discovered that McKala ought to babysit. Miranda washed cars and cleaned houses. Michael, at 11 years old, mowed every other lawn on the block and then some.
We made the best of it and made the best of friends, Jami and Shawn. We dejunked our lives. He had a lot of complications, but Mike healed. Madalynn grew. I learned ...we all did.
The very day we were to sign the contract for another year, Mike checked the listings one last time. You got it - he found this! We drove up immediately. I still can't get over God's providence. I'm looking out a back window right now at trees in a hilly pasture, hearing the guinea and the rooster. In the front is a small pond we fish and swim in, and play by on the small beach we've made. Past that is a field where the kids built a fence for their calves, lined by a creek we wade through and float down in the summertime. 5 bedrooms and 7 acres, they're not "ours" and that doesn't matter. God restored the "lifestyle" we thought was lost. We even got a dog, a black Labrador. Smokey's lived here his whole life. He's only been off the property 3 times and the owner didn't want to move him. He's 15 now, a part of the landscape, and will be sorely missed when he's gone.
The day that Mike's life was given back to him was what I call his "physical resurrection." His spiritual one was yet to come, but come it did. For 3 years, I spoke with the most prominent attorneys in North Carolina about the deception involved in Mike's case, but it never made it to trial. During that time, I wondered deep down if more money would just be another pit for us, wondered if there could be something "more." God knew that a life given to Him was surely "more" and so it happened, the thing I'd pleaded for earnestly for nearly half my life: Mike finally turned himself over to his Father.
Tonight, we'll go see the "Passion Play" together at our new church that's not very far from his new job; but unless they read this, they'll not know that 5 years ago today, Mike's body too was brought back to the living - that as he sits and watches the performance, 8 inches of Kevlar keep him alive. And Jesus said, "ALL POWER IS GIVEN UNTO ME IN HEAVEN AND IN EARTH. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I AM WITH YOU ALWAY, even unto the end of the world. Amen." ~ Matthew 28: 18-20.
No comments:
Post a Comment