Finally, after 3 months in the hospital, the doctors said Dad could go home. He would finally be discharged on the morning of April 17th! Our whole family had spent weeks at his bedside. With great relief and in anticipation of some carefree enjoyment, my daughter Alanna and I drove to the ranch for two days of rest and relaxation. When we arrived at the ranch, it was dark, 1:10 AM on August 17th. We walked in to find our home had been ransacked. Burglars had entered through an unlocked window. They took family heirlooms, jewelry, china, my father's gun safe and the sense of safety and security that are part of my earliest memories. Fearful that someone might still be in the house or on the property, Alanna and I and the three dogs exited quickly. 10 minutes later, we were walking in to my cousins house down the road to spend the night.
I had just kneeled down on a comfortable mattress and placed my head on a pillow, all the while processing verbally what had just transpired at the house. My cell phone rang at 1:26 AM. God quickly put this loss into perspective. The voice on the other end of the phone said, "Christie, your father is having a stroke. We need to get authorization for treatment."
Dad suffered a "classic left temporal stroke" just hours before being discharged. We got into the truck and drove back to San Francisco. Processing the burglary was put on hold.
I can only explain what follows as miraculous. The beginning of the miracle is that the hospital had wanted to discharge him on Friday. Had they done so, my father's stroke would have happened at home. Because he was in a certified stroke center, he was able to get treatment with TPA at the beginning of his stroke. He even put himself on the gurney that took him to ICU. But he quickly deteriorated. It was not looking good. He was in agony, unable to communicate and physically agitated. We were all heartbroken, including our nurses, surgeons, therapists. Everyone had worked hard these past months, getting him recovered to the point of going home. Now it would start over from the beginning, if we were lucky.
Some thirty hours after his stroke, at about 5 in the morning, my brother called to say that Dad was talking. Really talking! At 7:15 am, the phone rang. It was Dad. He asked Alanna for Grandma's cell phone number. Overjoyed is not an adequate word. "He said sweetie!" Dad is more himself than he was the day they were going to discharge him, even giving us the familiar "hang loose" sign with his right hand. We haven't seen this since before surgery. How many people have a stroke that leaves them better off than before? Neurologists can't explain it. But I can. Our God is good. He hears our prayers. He carries us when we cannot walk. He holds us in the palm of his hand. Amen.
