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Health & Fitness

caregiver, the beginning

This is simply the story of our last life, and the start of our new life.

 

We awoke on the morning of Aug. 20, 1999 to a great Sunday breakfast to usual summer time weather.  After a nice breakfast, we gathered our fishing poles and spent the morning at  Mundy's Mill enjoying ourselves and just talking about nothing at all.  We finally got home in the early afternoon and went out to our garden to pick tomato's okra, corn and squash for supper and retreated into the house to escape the heat. I laid back looking important while Barnell fussed around the kitchen getting the turkey breast and cornbread dressing ready unless I was called to do something important like wash a pan or peel a potato..

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We sat down to supper about 5:30, and while I attacked the table like it would disappear,  Barnell just kinda sat there, and just picked at her food..She just said that she didn't have an appetite  and we let it go at that..  After the dishes were washed and put up, we just relaxed in the living room and Barnell finally picked up the phone and over the next several hours, she called everyone we'd met during our career traveling around the country.  All her family and mine.  We finished up our evening saying we loved each other.  Nothing different from a thousand other days or nights.

August 21, I awoke as usual about 4:30 am to drink my coffee and get ready to go to my little job of Medicare transportation.  I came out of the Shower to find Barnell sitting up on the bed rubbing her right foot.  I asked her if she had a cramp or something, she nodded yes,, and I rubbed it for her and she laid back down as I finished up and prepared to leave, waking Sheena up for school and went back into the bedroom and found her doing the same thing..I just told her I loved her and would be back, kissing her goodbye.

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I'd just finished my first run of the day, when I got a call from my dispatcher about 7:30 am telling me to call home immediately.  I was looking for a phone when I got a radio from the main office to call immediately...I finally got to a phone and Sheena told me she came out of the bath and found Mom on the floor and she wouldn't wake up..I told her to call 911 and I'd be there in about 30 minutes.

I just got home and my neighbors told me she'd been taken to  Fayette Hospital.  I rushed there, and found her laying unconscious on the table in Emergency.  I went to the nurses station and told them who I was and wanted to see the Doctor as soon as possible.  Several minutes later, a Dr came in and told me that she appeared to have had a stroke on the left side and possibly her whole right side was gone as well as her speech.  It took several hours to get all the tests, MRI's cat scans and whatever else they could do.  When the Neurologists finally gave me the verdict.

 She would most likely never walk again.

The stroke was centered in the area of the brain that controlled speech. 

I called the family and left them the message of what had happened to my bride.

I went outside, and took a deep breath, lit a cigarette and let the tears flow. Completely devastated by I didn't know what, only the Anger that my bride had been hurt and she didn't deserve that. Totally at a loss as to what I would do or could do or what anything. Blank. Overwhelming Grief, wanting to deny or say kings X and go play someplace else... Alone with my Bride to take her hurt away..

I was outside again when my daughter Shannon showed up with her girlfriends, and ran up to me,,,Looked at me,,and I saw the fear in her eyes.  She'd lost her mom when she was kidnapped and murdered 15 years before. She now lost her Grand Mom who raised her,  She was staring at the only real dad she ever had who was destroyed, unable to speak, tears running down his face, not knowing what to do..  I knew then that I had no choice but to be DAD. The person that provided, protected, solved all problems.  I had to stand up and be the answer....Even though I wanted to crawl under the bed and hide, I had to be the one...

 

This is the Short version of our change of  life. I miss what was, I love what is....

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