Walking Out of the Fog

Powdermilk Biscuits… [made from] Whole wheat that gives shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be done.

I do have some biscuits in the refrigerator, but the strength I needed to get up and do what needed to be done since Thanksgiving did not come from biscuits.

November 17, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Richard was on a stepladder tugging on something he was trying shift on a shelf in the garage, and it gave way suddenly. He fell off the ladder. Not far at all, maybe 2 feet or less, but far enough. At first he thought he was okay, but then he wasn’t. I had to have the ambulance and volunteer fire department here for lift assistance Thursday morning. The Emergency Department said they couldn’t find anything really wrong and sent him home. The ambulance and fire department had to come again Friday morning when he woke up without sensation from the waist down to take him back to the Emergency Department. He was operated on Friday afternoon to repair damage to L3 and L4.

I am still not sure what exactly happened as a result of the operation but apparently the surgeon discovered a pocket of infection on the vertebrae in his back. He cleaned that out, but it got into his blood stream anyway. So Richard spent about 10 days in the hospital on IV antibiotics trying to get this infection (MRSA) under control. He didn’t feel sick, he didn’t have any symptoms of a blood stream infection, he felt fine—the infectious disease specialist said on paper he was “deathly ill.” The extra physical therapy he received because they couldn’t discharge him helped a great deal to get him semi-mobile.

Once the cultures came back negative, they put in a PICC line and sent him home with 6 weeks of IV antibiotics that I had to learn to give him 3 times a day.

He also came home with a Foley catheter and no control over the other bodily function. The Foley catheter started to do some horrific damage, and the urologist finally convinced Richard that it needed to be removed and that the alternative (self-catheterization as needed) would be much, much better. He was right.

I found myself having to do things for him that I never in a million years imagined that I would have to do. But I did. I found myself having to figure out solutions to problems that ordinarily he would have taken care of. And I did that too.

A physical therapist came. An occupational therapist came. Both of them were worth their weight in gold. Home health nurses came. We had doctor appointments. Lots of them. The surgeon. The urologist. His primary care provider.

And then he finally agreed to go to the wound care clinic so they could treat the pressure sore that had developed on his butt, which apparently had started in the hospital but nobody caught it. We were trying to treat it ourselves and it wasn’t getting worse, but it wasn’t healing either.

Now 4 months later, he has improved a great deal. He still uses the wheelchair and the walker for some things, but he can now walk with a cane. He can negotiate the porch steps now to get to the car without using the wheelchair. 

I still have to wrap his legs with the Velcro compression garments to keep the edema under control, and I have to help him get his feet in his clothing. But now there is not much else that I have to help him with. 

The surgeon says it could take up to a year for damaged nerves to regenerate, and there is a possibility he will never fully return to where he was before the accident. But…every improvement is an improvement and I’ll take it and be thankful.

A couple of weeks ago, I finally felt like going to the library and checking out some books, which was the signal that I am finally walking out of the fog bank that settled over our lives on November 17.

A prayer as part of a devotion I read during that time became a constant:

“Please help me learn to appreciate difficult days, being stimulated by the challenges I encounter rather than becoming distressed.”

Stimulated indeed!