Everything New Seems Like The Same Old Thing

When I first started this blog I wrote a little about politics, a little about how it feels to get older than dirt, even a little about other blogs, but back in “06” in the fall I began to wrtie about a trip Janet and I were taking to Finland via London.  One of the things I mentioned while we were in England was that some of our adventures in London were restricted by the serious pain that Janet was suffering in her back, up under the shoulder blades..

WE arrived in Finland, saw some sights , visited a few old friends the (one of our purposes in the trip) went sight seeing in the new Mormon Temple that had just been finished in Helsinki, and which was open to view for the general public.  The night after our visit to the temple we settled down in our little time-share and went to sleep.  In the middle of the night, Janet woke, screaming from pain in her back and could only sat “DOCTOR”.  I rushed her to the nearest emergency room, from which, after an examination, she was rushed to Helsinki’s Meilahti (Helsinki University) Hospital about fifty kilometers away. 

For the ensuing several months this blog became a log of my visits to the hospital where a brilliant surgeon had replaced five centimeters of he upper aorta with a Dacron tube, gave her a bypass, and treated her for two strokes which had occurred during the surgery.  I introduced you briefly to the two wonderful families from the local LDS church who took me and, by extension, us into their homes as family, tolerating and even loving several of my children who flew to Helsinki to see their mother and ultimately to take her home.

In spite of the warning from one of the neurologists at the hospital that when she woke, she might not know any of us or be able to function at all in a normal way, she suffered few easily tangible effects from all this except that recovery took quite a long time, and, as a result of the strokes, she has no peripheral vision on her right side, and we have both spent anxious moments going from doctor to doctor when it was discovered that she has, what they call, a dissected aorta, from top to bottom (for which a number of surgeries has been proposed, but none happened) we have lived the normal medicine filled lives of most sixty five to seven plus year old people.  She helped found a charter school and taught there for a couple of years and we have had some wonderful travel, though she has some problem in airplanes.

Yesterday she felt dizzy for most of the day and spent most of the day in bed, but this morning she felt all right so we spent part of the morning going to yard sales, and had lunch at one of our favorite restaurants.  Part way through lunch se complained that she was getting a really bad head-ache on the left side.  By the time we left the restaurant and started home she was having pain in her neck, left shoulder, and arm and by the time we got home, she was having pain in her side, and down the left leg.  Fearing a stroke, I have her a couple of aspirin to chew up and swallow (yuck) and suggested that we had better take her to the doctor.  She chose to go into her bedroom and lie down for awhile, and , my son Stuart and I had a prayer session in the living room requesting help from our Father in Heaven.  We then went into the bedroom where she was lying very uncomfortably on her right side, she was so tender on the left side that she couldn’t get comfortable and rest.  Stuart and I  anointed her with oil, laid our hands up on her head and gave her a blessing, after which we got he up, into the car and to the emergency room.

She spent most of the afternoon and evening giving blood samples, getting shots for the pain, and having a sonogram and CT scan,  They don’t think she had a stroke, but that the pain may be a result of swelling  in her aorta.  She has now been taken to Memorial Hospital in Savannah where the doctor who has been “watching” her aorta will compare the CT scans that were taken last winter with the ones taken to day, and  recommend further treatment if necessary.  I am nervous, but I felt a deep sense of peace as she was receiving the blessing so I am very optimistic.  I’ll keep in touch.  At least when I sing to her as she lays in bed, she can hear me and respond, and she was very cheerful as they took her away in the ambulance. Those of my blog friends who pray are invited to do so, and those who don’t, I appreciate good thoughts sent her way.