Hello Again—
If you haven’t read the previous update—I just posted it late last night—read it first. Anyways, my trip to California was exhausting but good. For starters, I found an apartment. It will still need some bathroom modification, but everything else is good. It’s right off the 215 on Quail Run Rd. in Riverside, about 5 miles from my school. It’s a great location and is set in a little bowl in some rocky hills. It’s brand new, so our move in time of late December works well for them. I also got to see many of my former students at a field tournament on Saturday night. A bunch of them met me and the high school director at Starbucks afterward and had a good time just goofing around. Sunday I spent at Church and got to see everybody for the first time in a while. Please keep praying for our friend Melissa Logan, who I also got to see. It’ll be nice to come home because I know that Kari and Melissa are dying to see each other. They have been on this rollercoaster since January and have been a great support to Kari and me. It’s horrible, but I’m thankful for someone that understands.
Also on Sunday, my mother called me with the sad news that her dad had passed away. My grandpa was ready to go to heaven though, and I’m sure the Lord was ready to have him. He was 93 and had just moved to a nursing home a few weeks ago. He was not on any medication and just died of old age. The thing I remember most about him was the story he always told about moving to the desert as a young man. He said he wanted to “get as far away from God as possible” so he moved to the desert in Southern California. Shortly afterwards, a Sunday school and church opened up right next to where he had moved. God continued to pursue him and he eventually became a Free Methodist Pastor (like Kari) When I was little, I used to get tired of the story, but as I got older I began to appreciate it and him for his life of service to God. I viewed his faith as pure uncomplicated, not because he had not endured a lot of things, but because he eventually just surrendered to the God that pursued him and who he could no longer deny—refreshing in a day and age that tries to make God into so many things other than what he is: God. I’ll be traveling to Kentucky for his memorial service Thursday through Saturday.
Monday I went to Gage and got to listen to my band. I must admit I was nervous to go there after being so far away, but I calmed down and was able to enjoy seeing the kids and fellow teachers and staff. In the afternoon I wrapped up things with the apartments and went home. I Can’t wait to go back.
Friday, November 11, 2005
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Update 11/10
Hello All—
I haven’t written in a while because things have been so busy. A lot has changed since our last update. For starters Kari has made a lot of progress and is even sitting here following along as I write this entry. The sleep doctor came on Friday, and while I was in California, they were trying (again) to keep Kari awake all day until 2:00am and then have her get up by 9:00am. They also took Kari off all sleeping medications. Friday and Saturday we tried this, but Kari got so agitated that by the time 2:00 rolled around she was in too much of a state of panic to actually sleep. We also had a major issue with one of Kari’s nurses while I was gone. Basically what happened is that Kari was in a lot of pain and was asking to go back to bed around 10:00pm or so. The nurse wanted to push Kari to stay up until at least midnight, but Kari didn’t want too and asked if she could talk to a doctor to explain why she wanted to go back to bed because the nurse wouldn’t let her. Rather than honoring Kari’s request, she reiterated that Kari had to stay up until midnight. At this point, Kari started to panic because she was in a lot of pain. Cyndi, Kari’s sister, explained the situation to the nurse and the history of Kari not sleeping and being anxious. She again refused. Basically she just wasn’t going to listen to the family or Kari because she assumed that she knew best, even though Kari was in obvious pain and had asked twice to go back to bed. She wasn’t even Kari’s regular nurse! I understand that the staff here at Craig wants to push the patients to go as far as they can, but at a certain point you have to listen to the patient. I don’t think she was malicious, but if she had really listened to Kari or Cyndi this wouldn’t have happened. Weather its arrogance, negligence, or just insensitivity, the outcome was that Kari had to suffer more pain and anxiety. I had been on the phone with Cyndi through some of this and when I heard what was going on, I got the nurse on the phone and screamed at her. Kari was put back to bed immediately. Just to wrap up the story, I met with the director of nursing, the nursing supervisor, the nurse, Kari, Cyndi (over the phone), and Kari’s mom to try to figure out how a nurse could be so irresponsible. All of us (family) feel that the nurse never was totally honest with what had happened. She stuck to her story that no one had ever asked her to put Kari to bed and anytime she couldn’t explain something, her memory was conveniently fuzzy. At first she didn’t even acknowledge talking to Kari at all. Anyways, to make a long story less long, we met for over 2 ½ hours and by the end of it I was satisfied that the directors understood what had happened. I think the simple fact that they were willing to meet for that long says a lot about how much they care that things are done right. I’m still going to file a grievance for the nurse’s dishonesty and misconduct, and I know the supervisors have talked to her about her mistakes, so I guess it’ll have to end there.
Anyways, it looked like the two days of sleeping that we had gotten out of her on 10/30 and 11/1 were just flukes. On Monday night, though, Kari got yet another kind of sleeping medication and actually slept through most of the night. Again on Tuesday and Wednesday night she slept well. In the last entry I wrote that we haven’t even seen what two nights of sleep in a row will do for her, but now we have three, and I can say that Kari’s mind is basically back to normal. (Yeah!!!!!!) The thing that makes me confident that this time is for real, is that Kari now doesn’t remember a lot of things from the past month, and speaks of it like it was all a dream. What she does remember of it she knows if it was real or a dream. She’s not just clear headed; she can also speak clearly and doesn’t get mixed up with things, even when she’s tired. Today we all went to the Ice cream shop again for lunch.
In some ways, though, becoming more aware has been hard for Kari. First of all, her muscles seem to get tighter the more awake she is. More importantly, though, this has been the first time Kari has been well enough to really think about her injury. First she was in survival mode, then just sick, then in pain, then delirious, and when she cleared up, it seemed like everything hit her at once. She was defiantly sad to learn how hard these last 5-6 weeks have been. Even though she knows it’s not her fault, she said she was sorry that it happened and that everyone was so sad and worried. Anyways, we still have a lot more things to get through. I also would like to thank all of you that decided to fast for us—I can never say for sure what brought Kari out of this, but I am thankful that it happened and if for nothing else, I know that your prayers have kept us relying on God, even if the path is not any clearer. I think that any attempt to try to quantify or explain this whole situation is simplistic at best, and answers aren't really the point of life anyways—thanks for helping to keep us going.
P.S. – I’ll write about my trip to California in a few hours here, but I gotta take Kari back to Craig (we’re at the apartment) for her shower.
I haven’t written in a while because things have been so busy. A lot has changed since our last update. For starters Kari has made a lot of progress and is even sitting here following along as I write this entry. The sleep doctor came on Friday, and while I was in California, they were trying (again) to keep Kari awake all day until 2:00am and then have her get up by 9:00am. They also took Kari off all sleeping medications. Friday and Saturday we tried this, but Kari got so agitated that by the time 2:00 rolled around she was in too much of a state of panic to actually sleep. We also had a major issue with one of Kari’s nurses while I was gone. Basically what happened is that Kari was in a lot of pain and was asking to go back to bed around 10:00pm or so. The nurse wanted to push Kari to stay up until at least midnight, but Kari didn’t want too and asked if she could talk to a doctor to explain why she wanted to go back to bed because the nurse wouldn’t let her. Rather than honoring Kari’s request, she reiterated that Kari had to stay up until midnight. At this point, Kari started to panic because she was in a lot of pain. Cyndi, Kari’s sister, explained the situation to the nurse and the history of Kari not sleeping and being anxious. She again refused. Basically she just wasn’t going to listen to the family or Kari because she assumed that she knew best, even though Kari was in obvious pain and had asked twice to go back to bed. She wasn’t even Kari’s regular nurse! I understand that the staff here at Craig wants to push the patients to go as far as they can, but at a certain point you have to listen to the patient. I don’t think she was malicious, but if she had really listened to Kari or Cyndi this wouldn’t have happened. Weather its arrogance, negligence, or just insensitivity, the outcome was that Kari had to suffer more pain and anxiety. I had been on the phone with Cyndi through some of this and when I heard what was going on, I got the nurse on the phone and screamed at her. Kari was put back to bed immediately. Just to wrap up the story, I met with the director of nursing, the nursing supervisor, the nurse, Kari, Cyndi (over the phone), and Kari’s mom to try to figure out how a nurse could be so irresponsible. All of us (family) feel that the nurse never was totally honest with what had happened. She stuck to her story that no one had ever asked her to put Kari to bed and anytime she couldn’t explain something, her memory was conveniently fuzzy. At first she didn’t even acknowledge talking to Kari at all. Anyways, to make a long story less long, we met for over 2 ½ hours and by the end of it I was satisfied that the directors understood what had happened. I think the simple fact that they were willing to meet for that long says a lot about how much they care that things are done right. I’m still going to file a grievance for the nurse’s dishonesty and misconduct, and I know the supervisors have talked to her about her mistakes, so I guess it’ll have to end there.
Anyways, it looked like the two days of sleeping that we had gotten out of her on 10/30 and 11/1 were just flukes. On Monday night, though, Kari got yet another kind of sleeping medication and actually slept through most of the night. Again on Tuesday and Wednesday night she slept well. In the last entry I wrote that we haven’t even seen what two nights of sleep in a row will do for her, but now we have three, and I can say that Kari’s mind is basically back to normal. (Yeah!!!!!!) The thing that makes me confident that this time is for real, is that Kari now doesn’t remember a lot of things from the past month, and speaks of it like it was all a dream. What she does remember of it she knows if it was real or a dream. She’s not just clear headed; she can also speak clearly and doesn’t get mixed up with things, even when she’s tired. Today we all went to the Ice cream shop again for lunch.
In some ways, though, becoming more aware has been hard for Kari. First of all, her muscles seem to get tighter the more awake she is. More importantly, though, this has been the first time Kari has been well enough to really think about her injury. First she was in survival mode, then just sick, then in pain, then delirious, and when she cleared up, it seemed like everything hit her at once. She was defiantly sad to learn how hard these last 5-6 weeks have been. Even though she knows it’s not her fault, she said she was sorry that it happened and that everyone was so sad and worried. Anyways, we still have a lot more things to get through. I also would like to thank all of you that decided to fast for us—I can never say for sure what brought Kari out of this, but I am thankful that it happened and if for nothing else, I know that your prayers have kept us relying on God, even if the path is not any clearer. I think that any attempt to try to quantify or explain this whole situation is simplistic at best, and answers aren't really the point of life anyways—thanks for helping to keep us going.
P.S. – I’ll write about my trip to California in a few hours here, but I gotta take Kari back to Craig (we’re at the apartment) for her shower.
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Update 11/3
Hello All—
Here’s the sleep update. Kari slept Sunday night, none Monday night, the whole night Tuesday, and only about 2 hours Wednesday night. Right now she is dozing off but waking up every few minutes because of spasms. We had a very good day, though. Kari was confused a lot less today. We did a couple of new things in PT (a sliding board transfer and stretching on the mat) and after OT we went over to Swedish Hospital to visit her old nurses. Melissa and Kristy were both there and were very excited to see her and amazed at how good she looked—almost back to normal and not even wearing oxygen during the day now. Kristy was the very first Nurse that Kari had and was there when Kari went into Surgery back in July. Kari was not 100% clear mentally today, but she was a lot better and told Kristy that it was “good to come back to visit to see how far you’ve come.” After our visit we went around the corner to a little ice cream shop that has the best ice cream I’ve ever had. It was our first time out by ourselves to a restaurant or store and was a lot of fun. Kari even drank the espresso that they had there. It was nice to be outside too. After we got back, ate dinner and got her back into bed her confusion and anxiety started to increase again. By about 8pm she had a hard time remembering anything we did today without excessive prompting and was getting very mixed up between what she was watching on TV and what she was doing. As I’m writing this she has been waking up and trying to tell me something but not making any sense and panicking a lot. It does finally seem like we’re making some progress, though, but it looks like night time will be hard for a while yet. It is so frustrating how she can be nice and relaxed for hours and then all of the sudden going into extreme panic—shaking, screaming, begging for help, and not knowing what’s going on or making sense when she speaks. We still haven’t seen what even two nights in a row of sleep can do for her. A sleep specialist is supposedly coming tomorrow afternoon, so we’ll see what he has to say. Looking forward to being at church on Sunday and Lester Oaks on Saturday and seeing people in Cali. I hope your fasting is going well if you are participating.
Aaron.
Here’s the sleep update. Kari slept Sunday night, none Monday night, the whole night Tuesday, and only about 2 hours Wednesday night. Right now she is dozing off but waking up every few minutes because of spasms. We had a very good day, though. Kari was confused a lot less today. We did a couple of new things in PT (a sliding board transfer and stretching on the mat) and after OT we went over to Swedish Hospital to visit her old nurses. Melissa and Kristy were both there and were very excited to see her and amazed at how good she looked—almost back to normal and not even wearing oxygen during the day now. Kristy was the very first Nurse that Kari had and was there when Kari went into Surgery back in July. Kari was not 100% clear mentally today, but she was a lot better and told Kristy that it was “good to come back to visit to see how far you’ve come.” After our visit we went around the corner to a little ice cream shop that has the best ice cream I’ve ever had. It was our first time out by ourselves to a restaurant or store and was a lot of fun. Kari even drank the espresso that they had there. It was nice to be outside too. After we got back, ate dinner and got her back into bed her confusion and anxiety started to increase again. By about 8pm she had a hard time remembering anything we did today without excessive prompting and was getting very mixed up between what she was watching on TV and what she was doing. As I’m writing this she has been waking up and trying to tell me something but not making any sense and panicking a lot. It does finally seem like we’re making some progress, though, but it looks like night time will be hard for a while yet. It is so frustrating how she can be nice and relaxed for hours and then all of the sudden going into extreme panic—shaking, screaming, begging for help, and not knowing what’s going on or making sense when she speaks. We still haven’t seen what even two nights in a row of sleep can do for her. A sleep specialist is supposedly coming tomorrow afternoon, so we’ll see what he has to say. Looking forward to being at church on Sunday and Lester Oaks on Saturday and seeing people in Cali. I hope your fasting is going well if you are participating.
Aaron.
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