Miracles All Around Me

The Rescue at Rehab

     
My time had the rehab center was not without its bizarre moments, bordering on the absurd. If the following story, "A Valentine's Day with Lots of Heart" were set in the Middle Ages, it would be a veritable "damsel-in-distress" plot, replete with villains who were warded off by my heroes!

                 


                          A Valentine's Day with Lots of Heart
                                      By Donna Lowich

Valentine's Day of 1986 marked my first whole month at the rehab center, and I was miserable. Not only was I separated from my family--my husband, Walter, and my four-year-old son, Jeffrey, but the surroundings in the hospital were difficult. I had undergone two spinal cord surgeries that had left me paralyzed from the shoulders down. I was working hard each and every day to change all that. I just wasn't getting much in the way of cooperation from the hospital staff.

The doctor had decided that I was taking in too much liquid, so she allowed only a small can of juice at each meal. This edict, unfortunately for me, coincided with the breakdown of the thermostat in my room, which measured the temperature to be a more-than-balmy, consistent 94 degrees. To be fair, they did send in a janitor who fiddled with it for a few minutes before pronouncing it "broken". And broken it remained for the rest of my stay--a total of six months.

As bad as that was, the nurse rotation had just recently changed which meant that Jeannette was assigned to me. Jeannette, the one nurse nobody wanted assigned to them, was now my night nurse. She was distinctly unpleasant to everyone, and especially to me. Or, so it seemed. Due to my paralysis, she spent "too much time"  (according to her) in my room. She pointed this out to me night after night. This was going to be a long six weeks, the duration of her rotation on my hall.

But this was a Friday night, and the hospital was having a Valentine's Day party for all of us. It was going to start at six o'clock, lasting for approximately three hours. I was looking forward to it all day, or more accurately, all week. It was a treat to think of escaping the overworked thermostat in my room for a little while.

It had been snowing in the afternoon, so I didn't think there was much of a chance that Walter and Jeffrey would be able to make it to the hospital for their usual Friday night visit. After all, they were almost an hour away from me, and that was traveling in good weather.

At four o'clock, my day at physical therapy had ended. I went back to my room, only to be closely followed in by Jeannette. The doctor, in her quest to annoy me, had ordered a procedure which required me to go to bed. Jeannette and an orderly helped me lay down. Once the procedure was done, she began taking off my sneakers and socks.

Startled, I asked,"What are you doing? I've got to be up because the party's tonight!" She answered that I was going to stay in bed because "I don't have time to get you up again."

My surprise at the turn of events changed quickly to devastation. I was going to be the only one to miss the party, but worse than that, I would be in that insufferably overheated room, and I'd be in bed until someone helped me to dress late on Saturday morning.

I couldn't believe how quickly my luck had changed. "Please, Jeannette, please don't leave me here." But Jeannette turned a deaf ear to my pleas. She had already decided my fate, and she wasn't about to change her plans for me, that was obvious.

She abruptly left the room without saying another word. Luckily, the orderly stayed with me to comfort me, an act of kindness that I remember gratefully to this day.

The telephone at my bedside rang and she answered it for me. It was Walter! He asked me what was wrong. He had called to say the snow had stopped, and that he and Jeffrey were going to come. Once I was sure that they were going to come out anyway, I described what had just happened.

He and Jeffrey had been talking of coming once the snow had stopped. This had given him even more resolve to come, literally, to my rescue.

It took them a bit longer than usual to get there, but soon I heard Jeffrey's giggles and his little running steps on the hallway, in a staccato pattern interrupted by Walter's long, hurried strides. There were hugs and kisses all the way around, and soon it was off to the party.

A late change in the weather along with Walter and Jeffrey's love and determination forecast a brighter Valentine's Day for me, and many brighter days in the future for all of us.