Long Nights

Karen and I have long nights now. She is starting to sleep some, but it’s not the kind of sleep that Karen needs and usually gets.

Karen has always been a real champion sleeper! I don’t mean she sleeps a lot, because she never has. But she’s always had the enjoyment of falling deeply asleep in minutes, and staying there for the whole strecth: six to eight hours.

I have not been like that for many, many years.

One of the “features” of her hospital stay was sleep deprivation. The hospital staff actually constantly make jokes about hospitals being terrible places to get sleep. I never thought those jokes were funny. As some of you who know me may imagine, I was pretty hard to get along with when I thought Karen’s care was contrary to what she needed. She absolutely HAD to come home just to sleep.

Quite a shame when you consider we were spending far, far more for a “room” than it would cost at the Panama Hotel in Hong Kong, for instance.

So, we are together from time to time during these very long nights. Sometimes we rendezvous at 3 am. On the 13th, Karen walked toward my office at 3am and said, “Happy anniversary, honey.” That was a great moment. We watched some stupid movie together, and then laid down in her new hospital-like bed, which is way too short! That was the first night she laid on her side. She didn’t really sleep though.

Karen and I want our life together back. That’s about the most comprehensive prayer request I can make. We were just beginning to enjoy our lives alone together, and we both really want that. Our life is on hold, as it were, for the time being.

I hate having Karen’s life be about medical discussions, especially because it’s all a bunch of guesswork, and not very good guesswork necessarily. I am concerned that the testing instrumentation is harmful to Karen. She has sure gotten a HUGE amount of radiation from the CT scans, vascular scans, MR scans, and daily or more X-rays. In my opinion, enough is enough.

At one point, I told the medical attendants there is not going to be any more ventilators for Karen. They said, “Are you going to refuse intubation?” I just answered, “I said it’s not necessary, and that’s the way it is. Do you understand?” Just being clear and definite scares people.

The ventilator caused a tremendous amount of damage to Karen, but she’s so tough, she is coming back from it. I say she’s tough, but hat’s not really it. She’s just earnest, and has faith.

Anyway, friends and family, you should know that Karen was fighting that worst of all enemies known to man: death. We were not merely panicked, and we were not simply having a negative psychology. ALL of her major systems failed, except her heart. The root cause is yet unknown, but I am  not sure at this time that “root causes” are all that important. The professionals don’t know why she started bleeding inside, and they do not understand how it is that she is recovering as much as she is.

After she got off the ventilator, the medical staff – whom I had taken aside for a moment of chastisement – finally admitted they did not expect her to survive. “She’s a very lucky woman,” said one.

Well, there is no such thing as luck. People do not understand the interaction of spirit and body. I don’t say I do, but I do understand there is one. I have great wonder what sort of ministrations were and are Divinely being administered to Karen, but we do behold it, and are very grateful to the Lord.

So, it’s night again. These nights are long, and strange.