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October 18, 2005
It Honestly Seems Like an Eternity, October 23, 3:33 PM
it honestly seems like an eternity since the last update, oct. 4th, which was the day that asher left the Shepherd Spinal Center. we have had to face so many new challenges which have brought continued levels of stress over the uncertainties for each challenges eventual outcome. I, personally, have become quite fond of saying, "i can't wait for 2 days from now to get here." the reason, of course, is that regardless of the outcome, in 2 days, whatever challenge(s) we are facing, will be over and we will have moved on to the next one(s).
our first week with asher, caring for him completely on our own, was certainly a time of greatly conflicting emotions. hopefully, it is obvious, that what seemed like such an impossibility for so long (bringing him home from the hospital), was a much longed for and greatly anticipated answer to prayer by us which held feelings of greatfulness and thanksgiving beyond the measure of our human capacity for expressing. Adding to that, though, was also the realization that we were also bound by the same limitations for expressing the overwhelming sense of helplessness that this new stage in asher's recovery process was about to place on all of us.
there is a place inside of each of us that we somehow seem to regard as "sacred" and, therefore, guard with all the selfishness we can find the strength to protect. it is this conflict that each of us must face, to varying degrees, almost on a daily basis, with this and the much higher ideal for selflessness. to that end each of us also has our place where we have, metaphorically, "drawn a line in the sand" for not budging one milimeter beyond that point in the fear that by doing so, will be the beginning of the end for what we have come to hold near and dear to ourselves for what we think is our god given right for protecting what we perceive to be the sanctity of self. in other words, the more we give of ourselves to the well-being of others, the more we are afraid that our "sacred self" will not only decrease, but will disappear altogether.
the irony is, perhaps, that the more (by choice, or not) one retreats behind one's line in the sand and that sacred place of "self" seems increasingly threatened by extinction that what makes that place truly sacred and more defined by a sense of character and self-worth is the actual decrease of our selfishness as a direct result of an increase in our own selflessness.
to put it more plainly, it is the process of dying to self that is really what brings us into a life of fulfilled purpose, but in order for life to spring forth, just like a seed that is planted in the ground must die before it can sprout new life, so must we also die. the dying process, if you have every witnessed it first hand in someone else, then you know what a long and painful process and filled with great suffering and anguish it can be. so it is in life, as we die to all that we have come to regard as our "sacred self" as we place the needs and suffering of others before our own wants and desires. these are certainly not circumstances, nor a life, that we would eagerly invite or strive to live, but it is the life that has been chosen for us by our own creator, who has not asked anything of us that he was unwilling to do himself, "by coming to serve and not be served."
i received an email from my mother yesterday telling me about a dream that she had some time ago, but had never shared with me. it seems that this dream was brought back to mind again recently in the early morning hours and it happened in such a was as to lead her to conclude that the time was right for sharing it.
after re-reading it several times it became apparent to me that her dream was speaking directly to our present lives with asher and the care that he needs from us throughout each day and night. This was her dream:
"I was walking down stairs, wide steps that were not attached to anything. As I came down a girl was coming up carrying a box. She was tall and thin with blond hair. The box was in front of her, she was carrying it with both hands, and she was looking straight ahead. There was a man following behind her several steps. He too was tall and thin. After they passed I stopped and turned around wondering what was in the box. I started back up the steps. I caught up with the man and I ask him what was in the box. he said, "two pairs of hands." Then I looked up the stairs and saw the girl at the top of the stairs lying in a fetal position with the box lying on the floor in front of her. In my mind I saw the hands no blood, a mans and a woman's. The box was made of wood and around the middle of it was red like velvet. There was also a bright light at the top of the stairs where the girl was lying with a white curtain behind her."
Certainly, since October 4th, when asher left the hospital, gloria and i have been his hands. we have been many other things, but most of all we have been his hands. it is like in this dream, our hands are no longer our own, they have become his, but perhaps even more than that, they have become offerings: "that you have done unto the least of these, you have done it unto me."
There is hardly a span of 10 minutes that goes by, when asher is awake and we are alone with him, that he does not make some request. and these requests can be as varied as wanting a drink to scratching his head. it is always at the moment when you have just begun to do something else that needs to be done or you have just finally sat down to take a much needed break that the next request will come. in your mind you are almost always immediately irritated, because what he wants seems so unnecessary at the moment and surely it can wait. he just had a sip of gatoraide less than 5 minutes ago, or his head itched less than 3, or he just called that person 15 minutes ago. everytime i find myself getting irritated, though, and that is not to say that i don't actually show my irritation more than i should, i try and take the time first to consider his circumstances and what it must be like for him. i also know that he knows that we get irritated which makes it all the more difficult for him to ask us in the first place. there is nothing worse than having to be dependant on others and at the same time dreading what their response is going to be, but really having no other options except to ask anyway. which makes our response all the more critical especially when i remind myself what jesus said to his disciples: what man is there among you when his son asks for a loaf of bread would give him a stone, and if he asks for a fish he will not give him a snake, will he? then he goes on to say that if those who are evil know how to give good gifts to their children then how much more will our heavenly father give what is good to those who ask him?" Amen.
Our continued thanks to all of you for standing with us these many long weeks and months. through it all we keep anticipating a time when things will get easier and less complicated, but the truth is they only seem to get more difficult and, often, more complicated. we have not lost faith, nor hope, and for that i am extremely thankful. i continue to pray for asher's full healing. there are still nights i find myself weeping before i give in to sleep. although asher never really complains to us about being a quadrapelegic now, i know that it weighs heavily on him. this is only complicated by the effects of his extensive brain injuries that he continues to experience.
he has been in pathways, shepherd's brain injury outpatient program, for 2 weeks now. having been in both the brain injury unit at shepherd hospital and the spinal cord unit we have a very good understanding for what the word "dual" means in the world of brain and spinal injuries. It means that you don't quite fit in anywhere. When asher is around other quads he probably feels like he fits in better with them than any other group, but they are not struggling with the effects of brain injuries so they really don't quite grasp the additional struggles that asher is having. when he is around a group of brain injury patients, like he is at pathways now, he seems to feel the least comfortable in that setting. he feels like those other patients understand what he is going through the least.
to my knowledge there is no such thing as a place that specializes in duals, primarily because it can be very complicated to work with them and two because the majority of people who have both spinal and brain injuries don't survive. given both of these facts, Shepherd really does a good job of trying to provide as much balance as possible in their rehab programs for "duals." one cannot really imagine how difficult this is to manage since there are not lots of opportunities to work out the rough spots. so, we have come to understand that when you are a dual, like asher is, when you are in a spinal cord injury rehab program that also addresses brain injury, the main emphasis is still going to be on the spinal cord injury. and the same also holds true for duals who are in a brain injury rehab program.
we should find out next week how long asher will be in pathways. it usually takes a couple of weeks in order to do a complete assessment and to be able to determine what they feel should be the necessary length of stay for him. asher is very anxious to return home to chattanooga, as are we. they still have not started doing the main body of work on our house, though. the insurance company has still not released the money for that to happen. i think all the damage that has been done by the hurricanes over the last few months may, in part, be causing some of the hold up. our insurance claims adjustor has been in texas for most of the past month. hopefully, when he returns next week things can get moving. please pray that they do.
in the last update i shared our need to get a handicapped equipped van. at the time we were having to rent one for approximately $100 a day. i also shared that we had found a van and had put a deposit down on it, but that we did not have the money to purchase it. several supporters of widows harvest ministries that i contacted about the possibility of helping us out with the cost advised me to go ahead and borrow the money to purchase the van since it would take a while to raise that much money. that is what we have done. we used our home equity line of credit in order to be able to do this. the blessing of having this van to use has helped us out significantly. it has not only proved to be an invaluable benefit to asher's needs, but it has also helped relieve some of the strain that affects my own bad back in many of the things that we have to do for asher now.
now, we not only need prayer for this debt be removed, but we also need prayer for the cost of modifying our home in order to be able to accomodate asher's needs. the costs for doing this is going to be just under $100,000.00. i must confess, that the weight of all of this potential debt along with everything else we are going through is becoming more than a bit overwhelming. just when i think i see a little daylight breaking out around the corner when i finally turn that corner i discover that it was only the hope of it's being there rather than it being a reality.
our days with asher, right now, require our attention from 6 am through 12 am, with the possibility of getting to sleep most of the 6 hours left to us in the early morning hours between those times. more often than not asher, himself, does not sleep through those hours, which means that we are not afforded that luxury either. if you might wonder what types of things that asher needs care for throughout any 24 hour period, just take a moment to think of all the things that your body needs care for during that period and you will have a pretty accurate idea for what kind of care asher needs for us to give to him.
i think one of the most difficult things for me in having to give asher this kind of care is that no dignity is left for him. all that is typically private for us is, now, no longer that way for him and he has no say so about it. it is either lose all dignity or die. there is certainly an object lesson to be preached from that one.
please forgive me if this all seems gloom and doom. that has not been my intention in any way. it is just that when something that is this catastropic in nature happens to a friend or family member once they are past the life threatening stages a perspective of what then occurs for that individual and those that care for him become more and more blurred and ultimately forgotten. i don't mean to suggest that we have become forgotten, to the contrary, it is because i do not believe that we have been forgotten that i am continuing to share as honestly as i can what our present situation is like. it continues to be harder than anything i could have ever imagined we would still be going through almost 6 months out from the time that asher suffered multiple catastrophic injuries.
so, how is my faith holding up in light of all that i have shared? about 2 weeks ago i finally felt like i could ask god why and be able to objectively hear his answer. the question had barely left my lips when i heard in my spirit an immediate reply. it came so quickly and so clearly that i was almost startled by it. the answer i heard with absolute clarity was "so that i might be glorified." that may not be an answer that many of you who are keeping up with this update will understand, but it was completely understandable and even comforting to me as i heard it. the how's and the why's for something as unimaginably tragic as this being able to bring glory to god is not for me to be able explain to others. it lies more in the realm of acceptance, which is actually just another way of saying by faith. it is something that each of us must come to understand and accept on our own, and truly what seems like foolish in this to some will be life altering for others.
if i were to suggest an answer, though, the only one that presently comes to mind is from Isaiah 29:16 "shall the potter be considered as equal with the clay, that what is made should say to its maker, "He did not make me"; or what is formed say to him who formed it, "he has no understanding"? in otherwords, equality with god, remains completely beyond our grasp. it is, in fact, the willingness and ability to accept this truth that brings with it a peace, though, and a joy that surpasses all understanding.
remembering that when one member among us suffers we all suffer, and when one member among us is honored we are all honored.....
praying for the peace of jerusalem,
andy mendonsa
asher with all his therapists at the shepherd spinal center
just prior to his october 4th exit date.
Posted by Andy Mendonsa at 07:48 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
October 04, 2005
After 134 Days In the Hospital, October 4, 11:30 PM
(additional Van need information added by request below signature)
I just finished counting up how many days asher/we have been in the hospital and it has been 134 days since asher fell 38 and a half feet inside an abandoned building while taking pictures and suffered multiple catastrophic injuries to his brain and spinal column. the prayers and every other kind of support imaginable, as well as unimaginable, have carried us through every single moment of every single day and will continuie to carry us through the many new challenges that we are about to face. what makes what we are about to face different from what we have already been facing each day these past 4 months with asher still in the hospital? as of 4 PM this afternoon asher was released from the shepherd spinal center and he is now with us in the hotel where we have been staying for the past 2 months.
asher is not the same person he was before he was injured, and neither are we. we are all handling all that we have been through in different ways. what has been hardest for one of us, has not necessarily been what has been hardest for the others, but on any given day, what was the hardest for each of us could have happened, and often did, for all of us at the same time. needless to say, on those days, we needed more than an extra helping of grace to get us through.
an expression that i often hear in an african american church i love to attend in chattanooga is, "God is good, all the time, and all the time, God is good." on a really, particularly lousy day, and there have been many more of these over the last few weeks than not, i sometimes have found it hard to squeeze those words through my gritted teeth, but in my mind i seem to have no problems hearing them spoken and even finding comfort in their truth.
at the end of 134 days with asher in the hospital i can say tonight, without gritted teeth, God is, indeed good, and He is good all the time. and it is truly my very hope and prayer, that if nothing else can be said about us based on all that we have been through up until this 134th day, that it can at least be said and believed by all of you that have stood along side of us all along the way, and seen all that God has done both in our lives as well as your own, that God is good all the time, and all the time God is good. and i hope that all of you are as thankful as i am to honestly not only be able to say that but believe it.
this past weekend was a very stressful one for us. we went into it not knowing where we were all going to be able to live when we brought asher home (our temporary atlanta one), nor did we know how we were going to transport him there. we had only found out a week before that a decision had been made to send asher to a different day rehab program after his exit date from the hospital than had been previously discussed. our understanding had been all along that asher would continue to go to the shepherd spinal center for out- patient therapy. which would mean that we would be provided with housing nearby as well as provisions would be made for transporting him back and forth.
the place that asher will now be going, instead, for out-patient therapy, is called Pathways (still part of Shepherd) and it is located about 25 minutes from shepherd in decatur, ga., on clairmont road. even though asher will be continuing with spinal therapy at Pathways, the main emphasis will be on his brain injuries.
what this has meant is that over the weekend we had to find another place to live that would accomodate all of us and we also had to find some transportation in order to not only bring asher home from the hospital, but to also be able to take him back and forth to Pathways each day once he starts there, which will not be for at least another week.
quite thankfully, the hotel where we are already staying, had a 2 bedroom suite that became available just today. how wonderful was that? it is even large enough for us to be able to bring in a hospital bed. the only draw back is that it cost more and it will only be available until the 13th. again, thankfully, i think that i have found a completely furnished apartment for us to move into that is handicap accessable and in a better location with regard to where Pathways is located. it will be more room for us, they are willing to give us a very short term lease and it will cost about the same thing that we are now having to pay in the larger hotel suite.
as soon as tomorrow we will know whether we will be able to get the apartment, and if we do it is ready for us to move into immediately (which, for us, will probably mean saturday).
transportation, which as i mentioned, is something that we are now being faced with providing completely ourselves, seems to be on the way to being solved as well. over the weekend i was able to find a fullsized handicap modified van to rent that was available for 30 days. they even were willing to deliver it to the hospital for us, which they did at 10 AM this morning. i honestly have no idea what we would have done today if we had not been able to get this. thankfully, God has taken that worry away from us. i have also found a used full sized van that, based on what asher's needs are, given the size of the wheel chair that has been prescribed for him, this one will be ideally suited to meet those needs. so, i am now in the process of trying to raise the money to buy it. the amount of money we would have to spend to rent a van the whole time we are here, coupled with the fact that we would still have to buy a van after our time here was over, doesn't really make any sense to me to put off doing this for any longer than we have to. by the same token, even a used, full size handicap modified van, with a lift is hugely expensive. and i sincerely mean hugely expensive.
leaving shepherd today, as much as we have been looking forward to it, this day was also not a day that came easily. after being in a setting where we had the support of wonderful nurses, techs, therpist, case workers, counselors, and doctors, to leave all of that behind all at once, is a pretty fearful thing. we had been told to expect this since we first came to shepherd, though, because it is pretty much that way for everyone that comes comes there. they were right, but i don't think it was so much fearful today for us to leave as it has been for the several days leading up to today. today was not been so bad, and that may be because there was so much to do that we didn't really have time to think about much of anything except trying to move everything from one hotel room to another, pack up all of asher's belongings and get them to the car, pick up all of asher prescriptions and other medical care items he will need on an ongoing bases and much much more.
asher, on the other hand, has not known any other life since he woke up from his coma into a new life without the use of his hands, legs and feet and only limited use of his arms. there were a number of tear filled moments just before we finally left after asher had gone around again and said goodbye to all the therapist in both the spinal unit and the brain injury unit that, as asher said to several of them, "they had saved his life." the depth of his sincerety was nothing like i think i have ever seen come from him both before or after his injuries.
one final bit of very encouraging news. the other night, while gloria, asher and hadrienne were sitting out in the "secret garden" at shepherd, asher took his first picture since his accident. even though he couldn't hold the camera himself, he directed his mother, who was holding the camera for him, for the shot of his sister he wanted to take. he did this by looking at the LCD screen (it's a digital camera) and then having gloria actually push the button on the camera to take it.
asher's first picture: his sister hadrienne.
May the Lord bless you and keep you all as we continue to be overwhelmed by the depth and breadth of the sincerety of your love for our family through all that God has been leading us through these many months, and we will surely have many more months to go.
Praying for the peace of jerusalem,
andy mendonsa
This information added by request on Thursday, October 6, 2005, 4:15 PM.
I have been asked to give the actual costs for a van like the one that asher needs. we have actually located such a van and are in the process of trying to raise the needed funds to help pay for it. the actual cost for this van, which is a 2004, with under 10K miles with all the handicap modifications that asher will need, including a wheel chair lift, is $45,280.00.
For those of you who have asked that this information be posted, thanks, and blessings.
Posted by Andy Mendonsa at 11:25 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack