Prayer changes things in life, we believe in our house

[ozarksboy]

What a week.

Monday morning at about 9:30, almost four hours into my workday, the receptionist paged me.

“R.D., phone call on 6100, R.D, phone call on 6100,” was announced across the big-box home improvement warehouse where I work.

I went to the hardware desk, picked up the phone and dialed in the number, then said, “Product services, this is R.D.”
It was my wife and she was frantic.

“Mom’s doctor just called and said she has 24-48 hours left. They’ve got her on oxygen and a breathing machine and they’re keeping her alive until I can get down there to say good-bye.”

“I’m on my way home,” I said.

My wife is from Houston. Around here, just north of Houston, Mo., seat of Texas County, we have to add that she is from Houston, Texas. She is a long way from home up here in the Ozarks, and it has been difficult for her since her mother went into a nursing home about five years ago.

Since then, her mother has been back and forth between nursing home and hospital. About three years ago she nearly died, and my wife’s sister moved her to a nursing home in Austin, Texas, near her home. She recovered, though not fully, and has been in the hospital numerous times. She got pneumonia a couple of weeks ago and was back in the hospital when the doctor called my wife.

When I got home, my wife was in a frenzy, figuring out what to do and what order to do it.

I took the car to get it serviced for the long drive. That took a couple of hours. When I got back home, she was packing. Later we took the cats, the bird and the fish to the vet’s office to be boarded. There were other loose ends to tie up that afternoon and evening.

Our plan was to get up very early on Tuesday morning and drive straight through to Austin so we’d have daylight for the trip, except for the part of it in Missouri, which I am familiar with. My wife does not trust my night driving.

We ate supper, then sat and watched a little bit of news on TV and were talking about going to bed when the phone rang. It was her sister, whose call my wife had been waiting for all day.

“I don’t know, Dee, but I think mother is doing better,” her sister said.

My wife, who had been told just a few hours previously that her mother was near death, was almost speechless.

After getting some questions answered, we learned that her mother was on oxygen and a bi-pap machine. I have sleep apnea and use a bi-pap machine every night, so I knew what that was. We had thought she was on one of those machines that does her breathing for her, a ventilator, but instead she was on a sleep apnea machine. Suddenly the situation didn’t see so dire to me.

“They were giving her 60 percent oxygen this morning, then they cut it to 50 percent, now it is 40 percent,” my sister-in-law said.

The situation seemed even less dire to me when I heard that. And while it wasn’t bright, the future for my mother-in-law didn’t seem quite so dark.

My wife talked some more to her sister, then called the hospital and talked to the nurse who had just come on duty. He said that her mother’s oxygen level had indeed been reduced, and that she was responsive to questions.

Suddenly, I wondered why the doctor was wanting to turn off the oxygen and breathing apparatus on a woman who was responsive.

No, she wasn’t talking, because she had the breathing mask on, but she was responding with nods. She was interacting with people around her.

“I can’t go along with turning the breathing machine off,” I told my wife. “Me either,” she said. “That sounds like euthanasia.”

We went to sleep Monday night with the idea that we would get up, not quite as early as planned, to talk to the nurse on duty in the morning and find out her mother’s condition. Then we would decide whether to head to Texas or not.

Tuesday morning, her mother was stable and was responding to the nurse appropriately. More than nodding, she was squeezing the nurse’s hand when asked and moving her toes on command.

I went on to work on Tuesday, surprising my HR manager who expected me to be on the road to Texas.

My wife kept vigil at home, calling and receiving calls from her sister and posting updates for her friends on Facebook, who were all praying. My mother-in-law’s condition remained unchanged.

On Wednesday while I was at work, I called my wife at dinner time for an update.

“I talked to Mom,” she said. “She knew who I was.”

And, she said, shortly after she talked to her mother, the doctor called and explained that the end was near and he wanted to cease all medications except for a strong painkiller, morphine, to make her comfortable before they turned off the oxygen and machine.

“Now that really sounds like euthanasia to me,” said my wife. “I told him no.”

Thursday, they took my mother-in-law off the bi-pap and put her on nose oxygen only. You know what I mean, those little tubes that go in your nostrils. She was breathing on her own. They were still suctioning her lungs, although she is a whole lot better.

Friday, the doctor called and said he was going to move her next week, assuming she continues to improve, to an extended care facility and start rehabilitation. This time he didn’t talk about doing any euthanizing. He said he couldn’t take any credit for her improvement. My wife said she gave all the credit to the Lord who answered prayers from people we know from here to Texas and in surrounding states.

“Well, a lot of people believe in that,” he said.

I don’t know what the future holds. I’m trusting that if it is the Lord’s will for her to live, she will. She’s only 80. I used to think that was old. Now at 58, 59 in July, 80 doesn’t seem so old. My parents are 80 and 81, and they’re still going strong, active in their church, going on trips. Heck, my dad still works part-time, standing behind a barber’s chair on his artificial hip.

So maybe my mother-in-law will be able to continue living, go through rehabilitation and get enough strength back to walk.

Even if she does, though, what will her future be like when Obamacare takes full effect in 2014 and she needs to go into the hospital again? I wonder if Obamacare had been going strong right now, would she have been allowed to live? Or would euthanasia have been her only option?

I’m not supposed to get too political on this board, so I’ll just end there and let you think about what Obamacare means to your own elderly relatives--and to you in your future.

[ptkexpres]

A-M-E-N ! ! !

[The Czar]

Glad to hear.... ...

[Frank_Cox]

Glad to hear she is doing better!

[TuscaloosaQ]

you better beleive I beleive that ozark boy. Prayers work I am a living testimony and that is all I got to say about that