Near Death Experience
May was the one-year anniversary of my dear wife's brush with death. That day in May 2008 started like any other day: I was at my desk working when I received a phone call from a neighborhood friend. She told me that Gretchen had collapsed at the school and that an ambulance had taken her to the hospital. By the time I got to the emergency room, they had Gretchen in a room, strapped down to a medical table. She was totally unconscious but was constantly thrashing and mumbling. They said they were trying to sedate her but that nothing was working very well. They needed to sedate her to keep her still enough to perform an MRI on her head. They finally succeeded in getting the MRI done but it was blurry because she was still moving about a bit, even though they had given her the strongest sedative that they dared use.
The MRI showed blood on Gretchen's brain. The ER doctor asked if it were possible that she had hit her head when she collapsed. I told him that those who were with her when she collapsed said she was participating in a Walk-a-thon at the school when she complained of extreme dizziness. She said she needed to sit down and that after she sat down, she collapsed and started convulsing. So no, I didn't think that she had hit her head. With this bit of diagnostics completed, the doctors decided she needed to be transferred to a nearby hospital that had a very experienced staff of neurological experts. They put her under general anesthesia, intubated her, and loaded her onto an ambulance for transfer.
At the new hospital, they performed an angiogram and then moved her to a room in the ER to await the results. We had been waiting in the room for about hour, when I noticed a group of people in surgical scrubs gathering outside the door. When the anesthesiologist arrived, he said that Gretchen was being taken in for emergency brain surgery and that the neurosurgeon would be there soon to explain the surgery. The surgeon then arrived and showed us the image derived from the angiogram that had been performed. He indicated that Gretchen had suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage caused by the rupture of an anterior communicating aneurysm. Even with my untrained eye, I could detect the aneurysm in the image; it looked like a large Mickey Mouse balloon wedged into the tight Y branch formed by two tiny blood vessels. He said that it looked like Gretchen had suffered one hemorrhage and that the goal was to seal off the aneurysm before a second hemorrhage occurred. He said the chances of surviving a second hemorrhage was only about 7-10%. He instructed us that the surgery would take about three hours and that the patient services lady would show us to the waiting room and then he followed Gretchen as they wheeled her out of the room.
After the longest 4 hours of my life, the surgeon appeared in the waiting room saying that the surgery had gone well and that they were closing now and that she would be moved to a room in the ICU in about an hour. The surgeon said that the surgery was a little tricky because of the location of the aneurysm, but I wouldn't understand exactly how tricky until a couple days later when the ICU nurse explained everything that was done. She explained it like this: first they shaved her head and opened a 7-inch incision that ran from her ear, up the side of her head, and curved to an end about the middle of her forehead at about where the hair line ended. They then pulled the skin and muscle down to expose the skull. They opened a 3-4-inch hole in her skull and used a retractor to pull her brain up to expose the location of the aneurysm (it was located on the bottom of her brain, close to where her right optic nerve connected). They clamped off the aneurysm with a tiny titanium clip. After the first clip was applied, the surgeon could see that blood was still swirling inside the aneurysm so a second clip was applied at an almost perpendicular angle. The application of the clips was extremely dangerous because if the surgeon went too deeply, it could cause scaring on the brain that could cause later seizures, and if he didn't go deep enough, he could perforate the blood vessel and kill her.
Quick Recovery
Obviously, Gretchen's condition was extremely dire. After the surgery, the doctor predicted that she would be in the ICU for about 14 days and would then be moved to a regular room where she would probably stay for another week. While she was in the ICU, I was at the hospital about 20 hours/day. Our four great kids took over to keep the house running while I was at the hospital. But the outpouring of love and support from our friends and neighbors made things much easier for our family. The support ran from the delivery of groceries and meals, to house cleaning and yard work. The greatest support they offered, however, were their prayers. At the time of her collapse, Gretchen was an assistant teacher at a special needs preschool that was held at the local elementary school. She also was a teacher of 4 and 5 year-old children in our church congregation. The parents of these children constantly told me that their little ones were praying for Gretchen daily. I also heard from my far-flung friends of all different faiths that they were keeping our family in their prayers.
I am convinced that, in answer to the many prayers offered on our behalf, Gretchen was helped to recover quickly. For the first few days after the surgery, she was mostly out of it and her short-term memory was shot. Every few hours, the ICU nurses would check for complications from the surgery that might need to be addressed. They would ask her if she knew where she was. She usually didn't know so they would remind her that she was in the hospital. Then they would ask if she knew why she was there. One of the times they asked this, we all had a good laugh when she answered: "well, whenever I've been in the hospital it's been because I've had a baby. I didn't have a baby, did I?" However, after the first few days, she recovered rapidly. When the physical therapists first made her get out of bed to walk around the ICU, she could barely make it around the ward, and this was with the therapist helping support her on one arm and me helping on the other. But two or three days later, she was able to complete the route a couple times in a row with little help.
A week after the surgery, Gretchen was ready to leave the hospital. However, her doctors weren't quite so ready to let her go. They wanted to keep her in the ICU a couple more days and then wanted her to stay in a regular room 3-5 more days after that. Nine days after her surgery, Gretchen was moved to a regular room but while in this room, she was restless and just wanted to go home. She constantly pestered her doctor until he relented and let her go home just a day-and-a-half after leaving the ICU. So just a little over 10 days after major brain surgery, Gretchen was back home.
A couple of weeks after leaving the hospital, I had to take her in to the neurosurgeon's office to have the staples removed that had sealed her incision. She was able to walk up a flight of stairs and into the office almost completely under her own power; I only held her hand and arm to help steady her. The nurse that was to remove the staples couldn't believe it. "You're walking?!" she said. "I have been reading your chart and I thought to myself that this is a person that is going to be have some major problems, but you look great!" After this office visit, I searched the web for the prognosis for those that have suffered a ruptured aneurysm. It was not encouraging. One citation that I found said this:
The prognosis for people who experience a ruptured aneurysm is not good. About 15 to 25 percent of those who experience a rupture do not survive the event. An additional 25 to 50 percent survive the immediate episode, but die of complications caused by bleeding in the brain. Of those who do survive, about 15 to 50 percent suffer permanent brain damage or physical disability.
I found further, that some of those that recover completely aren't able to walk unaided even a year after their surgery. On top of that, when Gretchen was referred to the neurologist to continue her treatment, the neurologist looked at her chart and said, "I can't see how you're sitting here in my office. You should be dead. I don't see any reason why you didn't die." However, I know why she didn't die and why, a year later, if you look at her, you couldn't tell that she had ever had an aneurysm: a loving Heavenly Father that answers prayers.
Tools
I believe completely in the power of prayer. I believe that all prayers are answered; sometimes they may not be answered as we'd like them to be, but they are answered, none the less. Often they are answered in ways that we don't recognize until years later. I also believe that we are often meant to be tools in the hands of our Father to be the answer to the prayers of those around us. A friend of mine tells this story about his wife: his wife and daughter were driving down a residential street when they noticed a family out on their lawn, in obvious agitation and distress. The two little girls were crying and the mother and father looked worried. My friend's wife felt prompted that she should pull the car over and ask if she could help but her daughter said: "why would we do that? We don't know them and we probably wouldn't be able to help anyway." So she kept driving but after a couple of blocks she couldn't fight the feeling that she should offer to help so she pulled the car over so she could make a u-turn. While she was checking to see if it was clear to turn around, she saw a little puppy in the middle of the street. Something told her that this was the cause of the family's distress so she opened her door and, with her daughter's help, coaxed the puppy into the car. She returned to the worried family and opened her car door and let the puppy jump out, after which a happy reunion ensued. I am sure that those little girls were praying for the safe return of their puppy and my friend's wife was the tool through which their prayer was answered.
Our Responsibility
This blog is meant to be political, rather than religious, in nature. So let me close by relating this to the current state of our country. While this country has always benefited from the prayers of its citizens, the need for prayer has seldom been more acute. I believe that it is important that we pray for our leaders each day, both for those that we oppose as well as those we agree with. I believe that, unfortunately, we are ruled by a wicked government at this time (I use 'ruled' here on purpose. With the unconstitutional powers that our president is wielding, with the numerous new bureaucratic czars that he is appointing, we aren't being governed; we're being ruled). This is not hyperbole; I sincerely believe that many of our current leaders are a fulfillment of Isiah's prophecy:
Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil; that put darkness for light and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!
I believe that we must pray each day that our honorable leaders will keep up the fight and do what they can to preserve our nation and pray that those who wish to harm the country will see the errors of their ways. However, we should also do more. Like my friend's wife, we must work to be the tools that will help these prayers to be answered. We must write letters, join peaceful protests like the Tea Parties, register our opinions with our representatives, become involved in the political process and in our communities and neighborhoods. It is not enough to just vote, we must be educated voters. We must actually learn about the candidates and not just base our vote on the rock-star status of the candidate. We must, in short, do the things that were considered a normal part of good citizenship for our forebears. It is the least we can do to show our appreciation for the legacy that they have bequeathed us.
Powerful post. I couldn't agree more. Thanks for the reminder.
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