The Longest Year

"I think God read my blog".  That was my first thought. But to understand this, first you have to have background information. Most of you already know this story since it has been our life, but just in case you are new, here it is.

I was looking back at a few previous posts and noticed the date and subject of on particular post. It was about the song "Oceans". I still love that song and Taya's voice. Breanna and I sang it in the car the other day. I was being all sappy and almost cried because hearing her sing the song made me want the truth of those words to be real in her heart and life. I think the song could be sung as a prayer.

Here is an excerpt of what I wrote that night. If you want to read the entire post click the word "Oceans" above.

"The 'trusting without borders' still makes me nervous to sing. 

What exactly does that mean? Where will He take us in this life with these kids? 

What if I don't like it? My heart isn't that strong. I just like everything to be ok and safe.

I think that sometimes trusting without borders means I won't always be ok and safe. 

But God's character is only good. 

Bad things might happen, but He can turn it around for good. 

My soul is safe with Him. 

I see faith getting stronger only by constantly being in the Word 

and believing it, acting on it, and praying. I think that's what makes 

me nervous too. I want that stronger faith, but I know that sometimes 

when hard times come I get angry and I believe the lies in my head. 

I have a negative attitude. I whine and complain. 

So I think that stronger faith may take awhile to cultivate in my soul.

I published that on September 3, 2014 at 10:26pm. The next day would be the start of the longest, hardest year and we had no idea. 

The night of September 3rd, Brent spoke for his friend, Rob, at his church youth event on in a nearby city. He performed the strength presentation. The floor was slippery and during one the feats, his foot slipped. The next day his knee was hurting. This wasn't anything out of the ordinary. We did not think much of it, until the pain persisted and it seemed to be a different kind of pain. Brent thought he may have twisted his knee when his foot slipped that night of the speaking event. We also wondered if it was a gout flare. But, most of Brent's gout has been in his ankles or wrist. At some point Brent could barely walk and was on crutches. He finally had an appointment on September 11. The doctor drained around 40 Cc's of fluid out of Brent's knee and gave him a cortisone shot. It only got worse. An MRI was scheduled and the results lead to surgery on Sept. 23. It was routine. Outpatient. Clean out the gout and fix a torn meniscus that was from an old football injury. Everything went fine. The next week, Brent was running back from the concession stand with Elizabeth at Breanna's last soccer game. It was such a great night. The weather was perfect. Everyone was happy and laughing.

We got home from the game. Brent was propping his leg up on the couch when a thick, yellowish liquid began to ooze from one of the incisions on his leg. It wasn't pretty. Brent's legged swelled incredibly fast. That's why two days later, we spent our 10 year wedding anniversary in the waiting room of the orthopedist. The doctor told Brent it was because he hadn't used his much and just needed some more time in therapy. I didn't believe him. By Saturday, Brent couldn't walk. I was irate. What was this doctor thinking? Brent had been running 2 days before and now the pain was unbearable and he couldn't walk. Something was wrong and I knew it had nothing to do with "needing more therapy".

Sunday morning, October 5th, Brent got in the motorized wheelchair at church and wound up running into the elevator wall with his bad leg. He got to Sunday school and almost passed out from the pain. I walked in (fuming mad because all weekend I kept telling Brent to go to the ER and he didn't go because the ER was full of people who were "hurt" from their choices at the Alabama/Ole Miss game Saturday night) just as the class finished praying for Brent. They said "we are taking him to the ER." Just so you can know what a supportive, compassionate wife I really am (ha!), my response said, "oh finally, after you get hurt at church." The room was dead silent. Brent and my friends just looked at me. My words were nasty, angry, and sacastic.  Three men took Brent to the ER. One of their wives, gracious in her speech and actions, drove me there a few minutes later. A few other kind friends in our Sunday School class volunteered to take care of our kids. I called Sonya and said we were headed to the ER. She and Greg arrived 3 hours later. 

After bloodwork, tests, and paperwork, they admitted Brent to the hospital. This was a good decision because little did they know I would have had a come to Jesus meeting with them if they had tried to send Brent home!

The doctor did surgery that afternoon. He came and told us Brent has strep in his knee. It was possible the previous surgery caused the sickness to stir up if it had been there from Brent's football days. Sunday night was a bad night. Monday was a worse morning. Thankfully, Brent's dad stayed the night, while I took the kids home and to school the next day. I do not remember a lot of details of the next few days, only that when I went to get him to go home on that Wednesday, we got a call that instead of going home, Brent was to have another surgery. Apparently Brent's numbers were not low enough. We were not very happy. Confused was more like it. Recovery was super hard. I asked for no more visitors that day. 

Before the unexpected surgery.
No clue why we are smiling. I think we were all on auto-pilot.

After.

During all of this, the question was "why is everything healing slowly or not at all". One of the answers came when Brent received a diagnosis of diabetes. Diabetes slows down the healing process. Not only that, he was on medication that caused his sugar to rise and he is insulin resistant. Now how in the world are you supposed to stabilize sugar with all that mess going on. I don't know. But he had a fabulous lady who finally got it all taken care of. 

Brent spent the weekend in the hospital. I hate overnights in the hospital. I hate weekends in the hospital even more. After 8 days in the hospital, we were cleared to leave. Only it was during a tornado warning. So we sat for an hour or more in the hallway waiting for the storm to pass. You can imagine how awesome that experience was. Brent came home with a PICC line intact. It was to remain in Brent's arm for six weeks. I still cringe at the thought of it. 

The next six weeks seemed dark. Nights were the worst. Tears fell most nights and sometimes in the mornings too. No one slept much. The nights lasted a million hours. Brent lived on the couch, leg propped up. There wasn't any pain relief. I'm not even exaggerating, not even a little. The muscle spasms in his leg would attack at any time, for no apparent reason.  Those were also painful. Therapy was ridiculously excruitating. The PICC line was annoying. Brent could even clean it and administer his own medication.  I was angry. I was angry at the doctor. I knew something else had been wrong. He wasn't listening to us. He was only listening to what he thought was happening. 

We missed the entire month of October. I have no idea how the kids made it through school and homework, let alone had clean clothes. We never studied spelling words or reviewed for math tests. I'm not real sure how my boss didn't fire me. Brent and I had been hoping to go see Rend Collective in concert at the end of the month to celebrate our anniversary. That didn't happen either.

EK fell asleep on the couch most nights because
she wanted to sleep with daddy.

Through a miracle that occurred when I asked for prayer on social media, Brent got an appointment with an infectious disease doctor 3 days after I asked for the referral. That doesn't happen, usually you have to wait weeks for an appointment. This rallied my spirits. It must have been confirmation. I knew God was going to fix it. This was what we were waiting for! We sang Rend Collective all the way to Memphis. 

I returned home from Memphis 4 hours later extremely angry. This time though, I was angry with God. The infectious disease doctor confirmed that the right things were being done. This is not what I wanted. I wanted answers. I wanted him to stop the pain. I wanted Brent to walk again. I hated the sound of crutches creaking with every step. I drove home in dead silence. Brent however, wasn't so mad. In fact, he wasn't even mad at all. He patted my shoulder from the backseat and told me not to be angry.  I didn't answer....or listen.  

Halloween came at the end of the week and the kids went to Sonya and Greg's for a break. But you know what they say, what can go wrong will go wrong. Apparently it was still our turn. The kids came home not 24 hours later because Elizabeth had the flu. So naturally, I caught the flu and put Breanna on preventative medicine. My goal was to keep the kids away from Brent. Thankfully, he did not get sick. My mom came and stayed with us for a few days. This was a good thing. Because the dreaded, evil lice entered our house the next week. I swear Satan himself came to our house and planted the bugs. I almost had a nervous breakdown. (Side note: should the dreaded and evil lice ever dare to come again, I will burn the house down.)

Brent went back to work in November with crutches and wheelchair. The ministry was suffering. Brent had so many parents helping. Everyone was understanding. No one was blaming him. They were so unbelievably supportive. But still when the youth minister misses an entire month, it shows.

November 14 came and another surgery with it. Brent had therapy 2 or 3 days a week or 2 and 3 hours at a time and his knee would not bend all the way nor would it straighten out all the way. He could not put his ankle to the floor. The doctor did a manipulation under anesthesia. If you have ever had one of these, then you know it is possibly one of the worst experiences in your life. It was painful and they did the cortisone shot again. With each surgery Brent was having a harder time recovering.

This is after the manipulation and the knee brace was
needed to force Brent's knee to bend or straighten.

I felt like Job's wife. I totally understood where she coming from. Although I wasn't telling Brent to curse God and die, I sure was asking why on earth is all this happening? Did we do something wrong? Did we do something right? Was God trying to get Brent's attention? What was He saying? It was all so pointless to me. There was nothing good coming from Brent's health issues. Family life was spiraling downward. Where was the good? Where was the help? Where was God? 

Thanksgiving came and the kids spent the week between our parents. A gracious and generous, kind woman in our church paid for someone to clean our house.  It was awesome. A clean house and no kids for week equaled vacation for us. We ate Thanksgiving dinner at Cracker Barrel. 

Even though Brent was back at therapy on his leg and even though he had an awesome physical therapist, there wasn't much progress. Even after the manipulation, his knee would not completely bend nor straighten. The pain was still there. The doctor told Brent he just had to rebuild his muscles. I was skeptical. Through some research and thinking about past injuries and surgeries, we discovered that Brent is allergic to cortisone. At least we had an explanation about why his knee would seem to be worse after the cortisone shots. It was almost as if it caused his muscles to atrophy.

Towards the end of December, Brent's leg began to improve a tiny bit. He walked with a cane or one crutch and still used the wheelchair while at work.  We felt like we were going to make it. 

And now I feel like this is a little long, so please stay tuned for Part II. 

Finally leaving the hospital after an 8 day stay and after the tornado.