Tuesday August 30 to Wednesday October 19
Home care had progressed to a point in mid September on the left thigh care where the surgeon said leave it be, dry dress it for 2 weeks and see how it responds. At the time the donor sight was slightly aggravated and there was a 2” length on the left inner thigh incision that was not fully closed. This had come along way for the left thigh being totally opened up in May. Basically they had cut across the groin and down both sides of the leg and pulled the skin back like a flap in order to find the infections. On October 11 after the 2 week break Home care reapplied the silver nitrate to the left thigh opening to prompt a better heal. On October 13 Home Care and my wife's family doctor agreed that a specialist should get involved for their expertise. The remaining opening wasn't healing up.The donor site for the graft was OK though.We had an Opthomoligist appointment on Oct 18, he stated again that the issue was blood flow and nerve related damage due to the cardiac arrests, that eye glass’s and medical intervention would not help, but that due to her age and health he was still hopeful it will improve so that my wife could drive. He admitted that at the Aug 22 appointment he secretly did not give her much hope to drive again. Her vision had improved from 20/60 in the left eye and 20/400 in the right eye to slightly better then 20/60 in the left eye and 20/100 in the right eye. That was huge! Since the ministry of transportation (praise God) had recently changed the requirement to 20/50 from 20/40 the doctor was hopeful that with maximising the use of glass’s my girl would drive again. We are so thankful that he never took her license, but simply trusted her not to drive until he was comfortable. That would come.
With Physiotherapy the passive motion (with help) on my girl's left knee bend was up to 112 and the active (on her own) was 90 degrees. The therapist hoped to get to 120, 130 is normal health. It was a brutal process.
My wife and I continued to experience many highs and lows during this time as she was healing quickly but again we were low on patience. We continued to cry out to God in particular concerning her vision. We felt strongly that we must trust God for her healing and praise him for the progress. One of the patterns we developed through the many medical visits was to both pray on the way their and back. To this day we still do and in fact often do when we simply drive somewhere. Prayer has become a centre piece in our lives. Our little family was together but nerves were frayed and dealing with everything going on was exhausting, I am sure for all of us.
We went to my girl's parent's cottage on Sept 11 for the weekend and made it down to the beach 3 times. That was a big test for my girl, lots of steps, but she did it. As at early October my girl no longer required the cane, wheelchair, toilet risers or couch risers. We watched our first movie other then TV on Oct 14. That seems pretty small, but even then after 5 months we had spent so little time relaxing and enjoying each others company.We were attending church regularly. I had been approved for the parental leave in September and would be off till January. It was still hard to trust God with all this stuff,
Psalm 25:4
New International Version (NIV)
Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths.
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