Thankfulness in the holiday season is normal for most people. It is a time we reflect while thinking through the passing year. In reflection, we can see both happy and sad memories. The emotionally healthy review of life keys on the happy memories rather than the sad. The sad ones fade more and more as we put this into practice. In years to come, the happy remains while the sad memories have been relegated to the corners of our minds.
A friend and I were talking at a work event in the first week of November. Wayne and I had not talked in two or three years, so we were both excited to catch up. He asked, “So, how have you and Pam been doing?” I replied, “We are doing great! We are both very excited to still be together.” I spoke as I would to anyone, but without thinking that Wayne did not know about the journey Pam and I had taken in the year 2021.
Wayne’s face drew a confused and concerned look as his mind churned the declaration. He knew that Pam and I have always been deeply in love. He most likely ruled out the possibility that we had severe marital problems, or nearly divorced. Pam’s health crossed his mind as he asked, “Is Pam OK?”
“Yes, Pam is doing well now. Certainly she is well enough for me to travel for work, or I would not be here, but she has experienced a rough year.” “What happened,” Wayne asked? I gave him the quick tour. “In February we had our second Covid vaccine. In the next couple of weeks Pam’s mind began to lose connections. She would be talking to me as I sat beside her, then just stop; freezing like a statue. I would shake her asking what she was saying and she would start again. One night when I was away working, we were talking on the phone just before going to sleep. She did it again, but I thought she had just fallen asleep. However, when I arrived home the next day, I found her lethargic. She had no memory of our conversation the night before.”
“Within days she had fallen asleep and while I could roust her, I could not wake her up fully. I consulted with her neurologist believing it was a re-emerged MS issue and we agreed that she should be hospitalized for extensive testing. In an effort to mitigate what we believed was an MS exacerbation, the doctor started daily IV steroids. After the first dose, she woke up for about forty-five minutes. After the second, she woke up for two hours. Finally, after the third dose, she woke up to normal life. She did not remember anything since the last Covid vaccine. Pam had lost a month of her memory and it has not returned to this day.”
Wayne was taken back. His mouth opened. He did not know what to say and stalled. He gathered his thoughts and asked again, “Is she ok now?” “Yes, she recovered fully. The best way I can explain it is that we took a person with MS (which in Pam’s case is a hyper immune system) and gave her a vaccine that hyped her immune system even more. Since the definition of MS includes the immune system attacking the person’s own body, we boosted the attack into a full blown war. The IV steroids suppressed it all until she could recover. If that was all she had to deal with this year it would have been a breeze, I said.” “There is more?” Wayne asked with worry showing. “Yes. So much more, I said.”
“We had been investigating an issue where Pam was losing more and more use of her hands and arms since late in 2019. Covid delayed a lot of the testing in 2020, but we finished all of them in mid-April of this year. The results showed that disks in her neck above and below where she had surgery before were pinching her spinal cord again. When we learned that the area of constriction housed nerves that traveled to the heart and lung area, we had no choice but to proceed with surgery. Repairing the whole neck would remediate constriction of the spinal cord in her neck.”
“The surgery was scheduled for June 16 and we prepared. Dr. Gill is a skilled and talented surgeon with the best team we have ever encountered. We had experience with all of them when the one disc was fixed three years earlier. This time Dr. Gill was much more contemplative due to the complexity and risk of this procedure. He would need to go in through the back of her neck, cutting through lots of muscle and nerves while avoiding blood vessels. The last time he entered from the front of her neck which was much easier. Despite the complexity, on the 16th, surgery went perfectly and everyone was so excited that it was done.”
I did not tell Wayne the deeper issues in that conversation. If there had been more time that night, I would have told him that with a victorious surgery, there had been only one snag. Pam had suffered a deep emotional scar.
Due to a communication snafu, Pam and I were not told when we would need to say goodbye before surgery. Because of her disability and lack of use in her hands, I had always taken her into the prep area and gotten her dressed for the surgery (or procedure), then kept her calm as they put in the IVs; even through the Covid era. We both assumed it would be the same this time. But, on June the 16th at 6:30 AM, a financial person took Pam to an area and told me I could wait where I was. Pam and I both assumed that I would be called back to the area later, but it did not happen. The rules had been changed. Or, they did not realize the extent of her disability, but nevertheless we were separated with no warning. Most importantly we were separated at a time Pam was secretly concerned that she might not make it through surgery and there was no goodbye kiss.
We had a largely unspoken rule that we did not part for any real length of time without a goodbye kiss. It was an unbroken rule for more than 27 years, but just before a major surgery where she was not sure she would survive, it was broken; not by the choice of either of us.
With that emotional wound fresh, the nurses called for help from strong men to get her from her chair to the bed and the attempt to place the IV was painfully unsuccessful. By then, Pam’s emotions hit the proverbial brick wall head on resulting in a full blown panic attack. She cried and begged for me to come to her, but the rules would not allow it. Finally, a nurse used her personal cell phone to call me for Pam. Prior to that phone call, I had already experienced a verbal run in with another nurse over the lack of communication until I broke into tears. When Pam’s crying voice came on the phone, it was almost more than I could take, but I had to try calming her. I had to get her through the panic until they could give her the first drugs to relax her. The nurses and anesthesia team did a great job taking it from there and Pam loves them all for helping her through that scary time. Still, the scar was formed and after that, just the mention of a needle, or me leaving her side, sent her into a panic attack.”
I picked the story back up for Wayne. “On Saturday night, July the third, we had a cook-out with friends invited to eat dinner and watch fireworks in our back field. Pam was tired late in the evening, but we had a long day, so I was not concerned. At eleven that night while getting her ready for bed, I discovered her shirt was wet. Then I found the dressing on her incision from the surgery was soaked and had some blood which was not normal at that point in her recovery. Wasting no time, we arrived at the emergency room by 11:30 PM. Dr. Gill was out of the country on vacation, but his partner, Dr. Briski came in to speak with us after the long night of testing. He was clear and straight as he spoke to us with calm compassion.” “We will have to take her to surgery as soon as I can get our team all here,” he said. (It was Sunday morning – July the fourth.) Pam asked, “What’s wrong?” “Dr. Briski explained that the wound had become infected with staph. He would go in and clean the wound out and close it up again. Then, with daily IV antibiotics, we would wait and watch to see if it cleared and healed up this time.”
“This time I was by her side in her hospital room as she was prepped for surgery and we kissed goodbye before they took her downstairs. She was more at ease, but for the second time in two weeks she was in surgery. This time it was an emergency on a Sunday and a holiday. We learned in conversation that Dr. Briski was supposed to have left that morning to go to Florida with his family. He had sent them on and stayed behind to take care of Pam. We were very grateful, but felt bad for his family.”
“Days passed in the hospital after surgery as we became close to the nurses, doctors and Dr. Briski’s physician assistant, Kristen. Kristen was there to answer questions Pam had and walk us through the daily steps. Pam connected with Kristen and she graciously spent a lot of time with Pam. All of the nurses and nursing assistants were great and we developed friendships with them. There are always moments of kindness in the days of pain, but we found hours of kindness there on that fourth floor of the hospital.”
“A week later we were back at home. Pam had a drain from the wound and heavy dressings over the incision. I had no problem measuring the drainage, changing the dressing and administering the daily IV in her PIC line because at home Pam felt safe and comfortable. During the healing process, a spot began to open in the incision right at the base of the neck. Soon a hole had opened and I was packing it daily with a special gauze. By the third week of July we knew there would be a third surgery with a plastic surgeon to pull muscle over like a flap and close the hole.”
“It was almost more than Pam could take emotionally, but she pushed ahead. On August the fourth, surgery number three occurred. It was the third time the same wound was opened in six weeks. Another week in the hospital started along with the recovery process for the third time. Daily IV’s stopped the third or fourth week of August and a week later the drain from the last surgery was finally removed. At the end of September, both Dr. Gill and Dr. Birchenough (the plastic surgeon) released her as healed. We sat in tears and gave thanks to God.”
I looked at my friend Wayne and again said, “We are so thankful and grateful to still be together.” Wayne stood silent for a few seconds, then he spoke. “It says something about you and Pam that when I asked how you both were doing, your response used words like, great, excited, grateful and thankful; after all you have been through this year.” I replied, “What else could we be after all of the love we have been shown and have experienced this year?”
Wayne and I continued catching up about work and both of our families, then went our separate ways. As I walked back to my hotel room that night, I again began to give thanks to God for the gift He gave me in Pam. Thanksgiving continued. I was thankful for our family and many friends who followed the situation loving us with prayer daily. Thankful for a neurologist in Dr. Pilch who believes that people with MS can have other health issues too. (He found the constricted spinal cord.) Thankful for Dr. Gill, Andy (his PA), Jennifer (his nurse), Dr. Briski, Kristen (his PA), Dr. Briski’s family, the nurses and anesthesia team in the operating rooms, nurses and assistants on the fourth floor, home health nurses Kathy and Misty, and the equipment teams and all of the others who touched our lives with love in those trying days. Most of all, I thanked God for his love which he had lavished on us.
Pam and I know that many families have experienced much worse this year. We know many have lost family members. (We have prayed for these families throughout the year.) So how can we be anything other than filled with Thanksgiving at Christmas. We pray you will remember the happy times and the people who have shown you love. And we hope you will join us in giving thanks to God (the originator of love) as this year ends.
Merry Christmas with love; from our home to yours.
Pam and Brad