It is two years to the day when I got three disturbing phone calls in a row from Joy's cellphone. She had left earlier in the morning to go to the Pitney Bowes facility in Corona about 45 minutes north of us. It was to be her last day of work for ten days. She had been working very hard, both at her job and at preparing for Christmas and was looking forward to some time off. A few hours after she left, my cell phone rang and I answered it but there was no voice at the other end. All I could hear was the sound of a vehicle moving through rainy weather. No one spoke. I spoke Joy's name, but there was no answer. My initial thought was that she had perhaps been kidnapped and had speed dialed my number to let me know she was in trouble, but couldn't speak to me. So I hung up. I was going to call her back, but I thought, that if she had been kidnapped and the kidnappers didn't know she had a phone, that a call from me would alert them.
The phone rang again and I heard the same noise: the sound of driving in the rain. After few moments I hung up again. I was trying to figure out what to do. Should I call the police? A few minutes later it rang again. This time Joy's friend Cyndy was on the phone. I asked what was going on, that I had had these two strange calls and was very worried. She said she was trying to use Joy's phone to call me, but couldn't figure out how to use it. She said Joy had showed up in Corona with a terrible headache, a headache like none she had ever experienced. She had laid down on the carpet in her office. She was frightened. Cyndy had called an ambulance, which had arrived and they were on the way to the emergency room.
And so began our terrible ordeal. I drove up to the hospital where it had been determined that she needed to go to another hospital that was better able to handle serious neurological problems. That was Loma Linda University Medical Center. The next day we learned from her scans and tests that she had two aneurysms; that one was rather large and needed to be clipped in a craniotomy procedure and that the second one could wait because it was small and in a difficult place to treat deep within the back of her brain. We were later to learn that the second aneurysm was small because it had burst that day. The blood on her brain from that aneurysm would cause severe vaso-spasms, which eventually led to her stroke ten days later.
It doesn't seem like two years ago. It seems like last week. The time has apparently flown by as we've spent so much of our time caring for Joy. The horror of the next four or five months after that rainy day just before Christmas will live with me forever. She actually stopped breathing early in the morning on January 3rd, 2011, but the doctors and nurses brought her back by installing a breathing tube. She spent two months in intensive care at two hospitals. And then 9 weeks at a rehabilitation facility which was itself a difficult experience for Susan and me, having to witness not only Joy in such a helpless condition on a daily basis, but also the scores of broken people who were fast approaching the end of their lives.
This Christmas I will miss the old Joy, who would work herself into exhaustion preparing for Christmas--shopping, making jams, jellies, toffee and cookies, cooking and pre-assembling the Beef Wellingtons to be served at Christmas dinner, wrapping presents and mailing them off, and decorating the house. She loved Christmas, and was intent on making it special for everyone. I tried to help reduce the load on her by volunteering to do those things I could do, but it always seemed she would add another task to the list of things to do to replace the one she could strike from the list because I was doing it. It seemed she could never do enough for those she loved.
We will have a happy Christmas this year. We have much to be grateful for. Sister Susan came through her chemotherapy treatment for lymphoma successfully and is now in remission. (Joy had learned of Susan's cancer a month before her own health crisis and it was something that was worrying her terribly in the run-up to that Christmas.) Joy is progressing in small steps as she grows stronger and more confident. She is getting better at doing tasks. She frequently comes into the kitchen while I'm cooking and tries to do things to tidy up. She checks the pots on the stove to see if everything is being prepared properly. And she's enthusiastically helping with the dishes after dinner, as the picture of her and her nurse Wendy below shows:
I also think Joy is tiring of having everything done for her. She wants to help do everything, but still doesn't quite have the understanding or dexterity to perform more complicated tasks. She will become more able as her health and awareness improve and as she re-learns basic skills for living.
Sister Susan came over to help decorate the tree last weekend and here is a picture of the two of them having fun together hanging ornaments:
Christmas celebrates the birth of our Savior and it is my favorite holiday of them all. It is an event that has inspired men and women down through the ages. In the kitchen these days I listen to classical Christmas music that His birth inspired and it lifts me like no other music. The birth of Jesus, the most influential and consequential man who ever lived, also marked the birth of the religion He gave to the world, the true religion of peace. I am grateful to God for the gift of his Creation and for blessing us with the gift of his Son. Joy to the World! The Lord has come!
Christmas has always been a holiday that honors and celebrates children. Joy, in many ways, is a child now and does everything at a child's pace. For example, it takes here nearly an hour to eat her dinner. She's been relieved of all the stress and anxiety of her former life and lives in a simple, calm and happy world where every object that catches her gaze is cause for wonderment. It's as if she is seeing everything for the first time. When Sue or Natalie take her shopping they come back and always say, "She has to touch and handle everything in the store!" I look forward to seeing Joy open her presents and enjoy the festivities of Christmas day.
The other day we received another beautiful hand-made card from Linda and Colin Carr who live in Spain. Across the bottom of the front of the card were silhouettes of figures in a winter scene. At breakfast the other morning, Joy was touching the figures on the card and smiling at it for a period of several minutes. It was as if she was in the scene and enjoying the winter wonderland with the silhouettes. It appears that Linda used a painting by Thomas Kinkade and added the silhouettes herself on a fold out section to create another three-dimensional card. The photo below doesn't do it justice:
Have
yourself a merry little Christmas
Let
your heart be light
From
now on, our troubles will be out of sight
Have
yourself a merry little Christmas
Make
the Yuletide gay
From
now on, our troubles will be miles away
Here
were are as in olden days
happy
golden days of yore
Faithful
friends who are dear to us
gather
near to us once more
Through
the years we all will be together
If
the fates allow
Hang
a shining star upon the highest bough
And
have yourself a merry little Christmas now.
Merry Christmas to you all and best wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year.
Love,
Joy and Doug
