Joanne Heim

The Whole Truth (Joanne)

"How are you?" is a question that I am asked often. My response is usually along the lines of "OK...hanging in there." And it's true. I am OK and hanging in there. But it's not quite the whole truth. There is often not time or space to answer fully--and maybe the person asking doesn't want the real answer. But here it is:

I am sad.

I am hurt.

I am lonely.

I am scared.

I feel cheated and betrayed and lost and alone.

Most days I don't really wan tot get up and face the day. Most days I creep to the edge of the pit of self-pity and look down into the depths. But most days I back away from the edge. 

But some days I jump on in and wallow in the muck feeling sorry for myself, angry and bitter. Those are not good days--days that I may be hanging on--but just barely and only by my fingernails. Those are days when I review all I have lost and worry that I may never get any better than I am right now. Those are days I ask, "Why Lord?" over and over. Days I play with despair and wish for a different life. Days I tell God how badly my feeling are hurt. Days I wonder how and Why he saved my life because this? is NOT the abundant life I feel like I was promised. This is just existing and I don't much like it. This feels like punishment. Like being abandoned. 

So that's a bigger truth--that's how I'm really doing. Some days I am ok and I am hanging in there but other day are pretty ugly and awful.

Everyday I try to remind myself of things I know are true:

Jesus does love me.

my life does have purpose even though it doesn't feel like it.

That there is good in this somewhere.

That this is just a season and it will end...someday...somehow.

Joanne 

Mornings on the the Deck (Toben)

We get to spend many Saturday mornings on the deck in our backyard drinking coffee, talking, reading, etc.. That's what we're doing right now. I even went and picked up a half dozen Crispy Cream sugar donuts to make everything perfect. I tell you what; we ate those donuts in about five minutes! We prefer the sugar to the glazed because they aren't quite as sweet. But I digress...

Joanne has been doing just fine since getting back from her adventure in the E.R..  I am now of the medical opinion that her passing out was a combination of Ambien, lack of good sleep and dehydration.  Talked to her G.P. a couple of times yesterday and after going over her scans and labs she doesn't feel the need to run any more tests. That's one less trip tot he doctor so we're good with that. Obviously no more Ambien for Joanne and she is going to try to get a couple of bottles of Gatorade in her today and see if that helps.

The girls are in the Springs with my folks (Nana and Papa). They love going down there and this is their last sleepover before Bethany heads off to college. I am so stoked that Beth is going to Whitworth--that's where Joanne and I went. She is keeping the Heim legacy at strong  in the Northwest. Love that! If she has anywhere near the experience that Joanne and I had she is in for a really amazing few years.

Jaime and I got to go shoot yesterday.  Gran came over to hang out with Joanne so we could go and it was FUN! Jaime is really progressing as a shooter and I am starting to become quite the pistolero myself. We did a little shooting at 50 feet which is a pretty good distance for a pistol shot from standing position. Put all 15 rounds on target from my trusty Beretta M9. Felt pretty good about that. Came home and visited my online ammo supplier and picked up some 9mm for Jaime and I and some .380 for myself.  It's amazing how much cheaper is online. Even cheaper than the Walmarts.

Now I will calculate how many people actually care about this last paragraph. o.

Joanne got her weekly massage yesterday. Brook, her masseuse, is so cool and Joanne looks forward to her hour with Brook every week. It really helps loosen Joanne up and gives her something to look forward to all week.

Something else to look forward to: Christy is coming for a visit! Joanne was talking about how much she missed her  friend and it dawns on me that I still had some miles left on United. So I called Christy and she was available next week. So I got online with UAL and crossed my fingers that I would be able to find a flight for 50,000 miles...or less. Wouldn't you know it; I found a tick on the exact right days for 20,000 miles!!! That's a total God thing. I have not found a ticket for so few miles in years! So Christy is here Wednesday and we can't wait. Nana helped us get the guest room ready last night and contributed a 120 year-old hand stitched quilt from my dearly departed Cordy. It looks great int here now--a little musty because we keep that door closed but we'll open the window, go after it with some Febreeze and turn on a fan and it should be smelling fresh as a daisy by the time Christy gets here.

We are headed to Cherry Creek State Park again tonight to have dinner with Gran and Papa. They haven't had much of a chance to take the camper anywhere too far from home this summer. They have been so faithful in helping out with Joanne. I have said it about 1000 times but I'll say it again. We couldn't do life without them. So a couple of times this summer they have taken the camper just down the road to Cherry Creek and we come over and hang out a little. Tonight is red beans and rice (one of my favorites!). 

Prayer Requests:

1. Praise that Joanne is OK!

2. Sleep, sleep, sleep for Joanne.

3. The girls have had a week and a half at school and so far everything is OK. As a parent to a 13 year old girl I hold my breath for the first couple of weeks. But so far so good! Another praise!

I love it when the praises outnumber the petitions! 

Toben

To the E.R. We Go (Toben)

Last night during dinner Joanne sort of passed out. She wasn't out cold but couldn't lift her head, open her eyes or talk. At first I thought I would just carry her out to the car and drive her to the hospital, but the more I tried to revive her the more I thought, "Better get 911 involved in this one." So made the call and minutes later there were 6 really big guys standing in our dining room. 

Joanne came to a little but was very confused about where she was and what day and time it was. I think she said she thought she was in her parent's camper! They loaded her up and we headed for Littleton Adventist, where Joanne spent a month of her life earlier this year. Sort of feels like a medical home away from home. It is strangely familiar.

I think there are things that we just get desensitized to. Hospitals are like that for me. After having Joanne in a hospital for five months, I feel a familiarity. The rooms are generally too small. The temperature is rarely right, and more often then not the chairs are uncomfortable and there aren't enough of them.

When Joanne got there the started blood work, and EKG and then wheeled her off to CAT scan. Thankfully everything came back normal. Obviously our greatest fear was another stroke or stroke-like event. But CAT ruled that out quickly. Thank God for medical technology that can tell in the space of 15 or 20 minutes what's going on in the brain. In fact, Joanne's CAT scan looks better than ever. Because she was in Adventist before they had copies of her old scans. The doctor on duty said that her scan last night was her best one by far and that her brain center-line shift looks to be back in place.

So, we stayed there for about three hours, and Joanne was able to wake up and answer some questions to the point the they were comfortable sending her home with us. Got her home, and she wanted a shower to "wash the hospital off her." After that we put her to bed but she decided she wanted a popsicle. She ate about half of it and was off to sleep. She slept through the night and was awake by 7. She is still rpetty confused about what happened. 

We ahve a call in to her primary care Doc. She had recently added Ambien to help Joanne sleep so we're not sure if that had anything to do with it. Could be some dehydration. Could be...who knows.

Anyhow, I will keep you posted over the next few days as we seek some answers to this medical mystery.

Prayer Requests:

1. Joanne is still very confused about what happened, which is a very bad feeling for her. Pray peace for her.

2. Pray that Joanne's Doc will have some good insight and advice about what to do or not do in the future.

3. Please pray for recovery for the family too. It throws us into a tail spin and brings back a lot of not-so-pleasant memories to be following an ambulance on the way to the emergency room! We all need to get our adrenalized heart rates back to normal.

Toben

Reading (Toben)

When Joanne had her stroke and she was in the ICU in a coma I remember praying two things. One was that Joanne would survive the stroke and wake up from her coma and the other prayer was that however she came out of it I wanted her to have the ability to read. I called that my top-secret prayer because I thought people would think it was foolish considering the shape she was in. But Joanne has always been a voracious reader and I knew that if she retained the ability to read, she could have at least some quality of life. 

Joanne will read anything. She loves spy novels and "cotton candy fiction." She loves the Bible and classic literature. She pretty much loves it all. 

Earlier this week she was in the middle of Plutarch's Lives which is supposed to be some big deal classic that everyone is supposed to read. But she said it was dry and a little boring, so I encouraged her to hit Amazon and get some fun stuff for her Kindle which Sarah so graciously brought her on one of her trips to visit. So she downloaded The Hunger Games thanks to a recommendation from the Franklin boys. Since she did that we have spoken to each other conversationally for about 10 minutes! She is fully engrossed. And that's a good thing.

I think for all of us if we just sit around and think about our lot in life we can get a little down, a little myopic, a little narcissistic. I don't think we were meant to have a ton of time to sit around and navel-gaze. Not that self reflection in a bad thing, but there is a time and a place for it and like anything, too much of it is probably not the best thing for us. I know this is true for our family. If we over-think it it's not the greatest, but if we stay in the moment we do OK. 

So I am thrilled for the answer to my long-ago prayer that Joanne is able to read and that it gives her something pleasurable to do and keeps her mind occupied, even if it means I lose my conversation partner for a couple of days.  Not sure what she'll read next but I am sure she would be open to suggestions.

We are still so pleased to have pumpkin back. She is much more mellow and less skittish then when she left us. She seems to be very happy to be near us, to be petted and held. She never used to be like that. Somehow her time in the wild has mellowed her out. 

Today we have nothing planned. We have tried to do that with our Sundays since Joanne got back. It is a much needed day for us to be together as a family with no agenda. Going places isn't easy. It takes some planning, some fore-thought and effort. I'll talk more about that in a future post. But being at home is easy and relaxing for the whole family. This is especially critical now that the girls are in school. They need their Sunday to do whatever it is they want to do before jumping back in to their busy week. And my favorite thing has always been to have the whole family under one roof. Makes me feel like all is right with the world.

Prayer Requests:

1. The girls had a great half-week of school last week and we would love to see that continue. We want them to like school as much as that is possible for a 10 and 13 year old.

2. Joanne is still desperate for sleep. May have to give a call to her doctor this week and see if there is something we can do about that. 

3. Praise that despite all she's been through, Joanne can still lose herself in a good book!

Toben

 

Pumpkin Returns! (Toben)

This is so cool! A friend of a friend read the blog earlier in the week and saw the prayer request for us to find/catch our cat and get her back in the house--she had been away for almost two months. So this person calls my friend Steve and offers a live trap that would be the right size for cat-catching. So Steve brings the trap.  First night we set it up we caught a raccoon. Hmmmm.

But last night the girls found pumpkin in a hole under our neighbors house--they saw her run in there from the yard. So anyhow, they put the trap right in front of the hole and then blasted the hole/cat with the hose! Pumpkin shoots out of the hole, into the trap and voila, we have pumpkin back!!! 

PRAYER ANSWERED! 

Pumpkin weighs almost nothing. And she is sort of smelly. But other then that she is OK. We kept her sequestered for a little bit for her to figure out that she could be a house cat again after being wild for  so long, but the girls were able to hold her and pet her so we figured she hadn't gone fully feral. So she now has the run of the house. It's good to have her back and Emma (her rightful owner) is THRILLED! 

I'm not sure of the name of our friend of s friend who supplied the trap but we are so thankful and grateful. I have been adding prayer requests to the end of these blogs for 7 months and to be honest, most of the time we don't get results. Now that starts a whole theological debate about prayer and how God works. I don't want to get into that in this post. I just want to say that it is very cool that a prayer request on Monday ends up being answered on Friday. Wish they all happened that way!

We are in for a relaxing weekend. Very little on the calendar. The girls started school on Wednesday so I think they are looking forward to just chilling out today as they prepare for their first full week of school starting Monday. We have church tonight. And I think we are going to do family movie afternoon tomorrow--we may watch a movie called The Sandlot that has come highly recommended. Other then that, not much happening.  Joanne loves these laid-back weekends.

Brief Joanne update: She is taking a couple of weeks off from Spalding rehab. She has been in the hospital or some sort of professional therapy for 7 months now and is ready for a little break. Unfortunately during this break she has a few doctors appointments. She had to give blood yesterday to check (again) for clotting issues. And she is going to see and ENT to see if the intubation and trach (three months worth) left her vocal cords scarred.

And she is going to see and endocrinologist to see about a nodule that they found on her thyroid when she was still at Littleton Adventist. None of us even remembered that they had found one but her primary care doc found a notation in her chart so we are having it checked out. 

I have to say that I am so pleased with Kaiser and Joanne's primary care doctor. She is obviously paying attention to Joanne and her chart and is on top of getting Joanne the care/tests that she needs. Thanks Dr. Vandeloo!

Prayer Requests:

1. Praise, praise, praise for the return of our long lost cat Pumpkin!

2. Joanne is not sleeping well and would love to string a couple of good nights of rest together.

3. Please pray that Joanne's two week break from Spalding will be restorative for her. 

4. Pray for a smooth move into the new school year for the girls. So far everything points to a great start but would love to see that continue. The girls have been through so much this last 7 months and a good school year for them this year would be huge in restoring normalcy.

Toben

Back to School (Toben)

Today is the first day of school for the girls. Audrey is in 8th grade and Emma in 5th. I am doing ok with Emma being a 5th grader but Audrey in 8th grade? That's a little harder to swallow. THat means she'll be in high school next year. I am definitely not read for that. She turned 13 a couple of weeks ago and got a lot of privileges to go along with her official move into the teen years. She got a cell phone, some makeup, permission to shave her legs and a computer for school (although so far it has been used for everything but school. It just feels like she has grown up over the summer. Doesn't hurt that she is about 5'4" and wears a women's size 10 shoe! 

Audrey has also really developed her style over the summer. Up to a certain age it seems like kids will wear whatever you put on them, but Audrey has some very strict ideas about what she will wear and what she won't. She is especially interested in wearing clothes she has "modified" which is a nice way of saying "cut up with scissors." Of course she isn't allowed to wear her creations to school thanks to the dress code, but she has plenty of other funky/punky stuff to wear. It compliments the sort-of mohawk we allowed her to get a week ago. Regardless, the girl has developed a definite taste and style.

Emma is still her happy-go-lucky self. She has taken a special interest in the garden and all the cool plants we have int he back yard.  number of ladies came to the house at the beginning of the summer and put the garden in but Joanne hasn't been in much shape to attend to it, so it has become Emma's garden. She waters every day and fusses over the plants, harvesting some peppers here and some tomatoes there. We have had enough lettuce for exactly 1.5 salads. Still, it is fun to see her take and interest and work so diligently on the garden. Also cool that she has a class of 13 kids this year! She is going to absolutely thrive in a smaller class environment.

Joanne is still making a little progress here and there. She does a lot of therapy every day; primarily PT and then sees her speech therapist a couple of times a week. Joanne's dad has proven to be a very gifted physical therapist so he works with her most days. On the days that I am home I do her exercises with her, but I am much less skilled then Joannes dad has become. Joanne still deals with a lot of emotions involving her current state. She is so frustrated that she can't do the "normal stuff." But I believe with time she'll improve and be able to tackle things like school chapel and going to the Walmart. Right now things like that just massively over-stimulate her and she struggles to keep it together.

He is walking with the use of a cane but cant go far before she is exhausted so we usually roll around in the wheelchair when we are out. 

Prayer requests:

 

1. Our cat pumpkin escaped a couple of months ago and is living under our deck. She has been impossible to catch and get back into the house. We miss her and would love to have her back inside, especially before it starts to get cold.

2. Joanne's spirits are pretty low and she needs encouragement. Please pray that things would come along to brighten her days.

3. Please pray for a good start to the school year for the girls.

Toben

Update from Training Camp

From Joanne's Dad:

Seven days into rookie fall training camp and all is well – some soreness, but nothing broken.  On Friday, July 29^th, Joanne’s PT (Sylvia) threw us a long pass by suggesting we take off a couple of weeks to work on new exercises she demonstrated to her Head Coach (Toben); Offensive Coach (Kay, mom;, and her Personal Trainer (Papa Chuck).  So, I (Chuck) have joined Joanne early each morning at her gym (garage) for a 1-2 hour workout that consists of about 17 different exercises.  Most require that I both position Joanne as well as talk her step-by-step through the repetitions (GO Joanne!), but some allow me to continue reading her Spurgeon’s morning devotion, and George MacDonald’s Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood.   How blessed we were to read yesterday (through the character of the Vicar Walton), “Nothing I repeat, so much as humble ministration to your neighbors, will help you to that perfect love of God which casteth out fear; nothing but the love of God – that God revealed in Christ – will make you able to love your neighbor aright; and the Spirit of God, which alone gives might for any good, will by these loves, which are life, strengthen you at last to believe in the light even in the midst of darkness; to hold the resolution formed in health when sickness has altered the appearance of everything around you…”  (Of course, when my neighbor is my oldest daughter, my humble ministrations are not only a joy, but a true privilege that I would have never been afforded but for her stroke.)

Being there every day makes it hard to see progress, but yesterday (Aug 5^th), when Toben took Joanne for therapy, Sylvia (PT) had some very encouraging words for Joanne about her decreased muscle tone and increased ability to control one muscle at a time in her left leg, rather than the post-stroke tendency to move hip, knee, and ankle all together.   Thanks Sylvia – that’s sufficient inspiration to get us through this next week.  Where would we be without your guidance?  And in that short hour, Sylvia had Joanne walking even better and made a very encouraging prediction about her ability several months from now.

Joanne is now also doing” three-a-day” 30 minute sessions in her “JAS” (Joint Active System) – which is a polite name for a medieval torture boot with a screw jack mechanism to stretch her Achilles tendon.  Just picture James Bond under the hands of Ernst Blofeld.

Please continue to pray that someday she and I will be doing these same kind of exercises with her left arm – which today is only range-of-motion passive stretching since it remains paralyzed.

God bless all you faithful praying friends!

Chuck