It was a short ride to our tiny local, rural hospital.
At that time, the hospital was not equipped to deal with serious injuries for patients like him. They took ex-rays and did the best they could to stabilize the injury.
But I became alarmed when I saw them place a flimsy knee splint lined with a thin pillow underneath his leg. A break that bad should be set with a solid cast.
Not only that, but we had to figure out some way to prop it out straight in front of him. The broken bone was a couple of inches above his knee. Even I knew it should not be bent if it was going to heal properly.
After the temporary splint was in place, they quickly indicated they wanted to send him home! I panicked. My imagination went wild trying to picture the horror show it would be to care for him in this condition.
With tears streaming down my face, I stood there in shock. I tried to explain to the medical staff in desperation that sending him home like this was not an option. I did not have the knowledge, skills or equipment to handle this injury alone at home.
Enter – an extreme panic attack.
DIVINE HELP ARRIVES
Thankfully, at that moment, our pastor and his wife arrived at the hospital. I had called them earlier and asked them to come and provide prayer and morale support.
I begged our pastor to help me convince them that they should not be in a rush to send him home. I needed his professional oratory skills to convince the doctor to see things my way. It was unthinkable for them to send us home yet without risking addition injury to his badly broken leg.
The pastor and his wife stepped into the tiny radiation lab with me. Together we reviewed the X-ray films on the X-ray illuminator box screen. Then it was time to confer with the doctor on call. I begged the doctor at the very least to keep my husband overnight for observation. At the very least, this would buy us time to figure out what to do from there.
Our pastor examined the ex-rays closely. He then asked a few probing questions and calmly echoed my concerns. After his initial resistance to the idea of admitting my husband the doctor finally agreed. They would keep him for overnight observation.
I heaved a huge sigh of relief.
Once my husband was admitted and settled in a hospital room, I began to talk to the night nurses. They had just arrived for their overnight shift. As I discussed the care my husband would need during the night, their eyes seemed to glaze over.
They all looked to me to be age sixty or above. They told me they were not trained to care for the special needs of a quadriplegic. (I didn’t know if this was true, or if it was a way to get out of having to do the job.)
It was a sleepless and exhausting night for me. When I
Anxiety filled my heart over what to do. Exhausted, I collapsed on the uncomfortable recliner in one corner of the room.
I said a prayer asking for divine help and cried. I tried to sleep, but was only able to doze fitfully, with one eye open, on high alert as a new mother is with a brand-new infant.
I was in fight or flight mode.
A DIFFICULT DECISION
The next morning, my husband’s parents arrived at the hospital. They had driven all night, several hundred miles to get there. We discussed all options and mad a few phone calls. After conferring with medical experts in Houston, we made a difficult decision.
Our only viable option became clear.
We had no choice but to transport my husband by ambulance back to Houston, Texas. He’d spent nine months as an in-patient at a specialized medical rehab center there after his initial accident. That was the only facility familiar with his case and medically qualified to help us.
The immediate challenge we faced was daunting. It required a grueling six-hour ambulance ride from our little rural town in East Texas, back to Houston.
If not for answered prayer, our pastor’s help, the support of my husband’s parents and the qualified medical team at the rehab center, I would not have been able to handle this situation alone.
This event called for professional medical intervention.
Even though I was an experienced caregiver by then, I had to admit I needed help. I was not able to resolve this challenge alone. I did not have the skills nor the knowledge necessary to address this complex challenge.
ANSWERED PRAYER
We stayed in Houston for about ten days. The medical team there jumped into action after reviewing the X-rays and taking a few of their own.
They ruled out performing surgery on him right away. It was too risky in his condition and the chance of infection setting in was high in his case.
He was never expected to walk again. So even if the bone didn’t set perfectly, it wasn’t expected to affect his general quality of life.
After making that decision, they immediately put a proper cast on my husband’s leg. The cast covered his leg from the top of his thigh, an inch or two beneath his groin, down to his foot.
I then got a crash course in how to care for a paralyzed person who also wore a cast.
I learned how to work around the cast to bathe and perform his daily toilet routine. I also learned how to transfer him safely from his chair to the bed and back.
The latter required a special leg sling attached to the Hoyer lift I used at home to move him. It was a frustrating, slow process, and very time consuming to figure it all out.
The rehab personnel then ordered a specialized part for his wheelchair. This part was a prop attached to the chair. It allowed his leg to remain in a horizontal position while in the wheelchair.
I was still anxious about how I would manage to care for him alone at home. But I was also very grateful for the help of experts who knew what they were doing.
It helped when they told me I could call them at any time of the day or night if I had questions once we got home.
Before we headed home, they told us his recovery period would be twice as long as it would have been if he was not a quad.
So, instead of six weeks of recovery, it would take twelve weeks for his leg to heal enough to be able to bend it again.
LIFE LESSONS LEARNED:
No matter how careful we are as caregivers, freak accidents are still possible. We can’t protect our loved ones from all possible harm.
When facing secondary injuries, it helps to remain calm and collected instead of giving in to panic an anxiety.
If we need help to resolve a critical challenge, we as caregivers need to be willing to ask for help from God and from others.
I needed my Creator’s help and guidance. He heard the cry of my heart and answered my prayers in both practical and spiritual ways.
God brought together the right people, with the right knowledge and the right skills at the right time. He helped me learn the skills needed to deal with this new challenge.
He gave me the strength and grace to face this situation head on, even though in truth, I was a hot mess. He gets all the glory!
Like the disciple Paul in the
In truth, I was weak, but He was strong. I was only strong when I yielded and allowed Him to work through me.
During my husband’s recovery from this injury, I held on to a scripture that brought comfort to my weary soul.
It tells the story of how Paul pleaded with God to take his “thorn in the flesh” away three times. Three times, God said “No”.
Why?
Because God wanted Paul to understand that any good things he did for others did not come from himself, but from a divine source.
Like me, Paul had a stubborn pride problem. God was teaching Paul about humility. Likewise, He used this situation to teach me what it means to rely on Him solely as my source for grace, mercy and strength.
How? By not removing his problem, but instead helping Paul to rely on his Creator for the strength and grace he needed to keep going.
“But he [God] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
[Paul speaking] “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
~ 2 Corinthians 12:9
