Shower chair

 Six years ago, after the accident, I wrote about the luxury of a shower. This week Betsy climbed up to the attic to retrieve the shower chair to give away. I was very pleased when the insurance company agreed to purchase that chair, and I was also very pleased to watch it leave the house, knowing that no one in my family needed it any more. 

Request

Dealing with the insurance company regarding on-going medical bills resulting from the accident is creating much stress, anxiety and frustration in our lives. Please join us in praying that these issues would be quickly and easily resolved. 

7:15 a.m.

Aaron is scheduled for surgery on his upper arm this morning.

Urologist

After waiting an hour and a half, the urologist pronounced Betsy's kidneys and liver in working order. Between fifteen and twenty percent of her right kidney was permanently damaged in the accident. But the remaining part of her kidney and her other kidney are functioning normally, while her liver continues to heal.

Subdued

I knew Betsy didn't feel well, but I didn't know just how serious it was until I saw her crocheting project. She is fashioning an afghan from muted, earth tones. I suggested she pull on a pair of colored, striped socks for her health. 

Souvenirs

Betsy's graduation from Physical Therapy was only temporary. She resumed therapy this week--this time for her shoulder. According to our family doctor, Betsy has a "winged" shoulder blade. Also, when her ribs healed they did not line up correctly with her vertebrae. She is undergoing therapy to strengthen her shoulder muscles.

Aaron hasn't regressed to PT, but has shoulder pain of his own. Visits with local doctors, a CT scan and two MRI's, revealed a tumor in his upper arm bone (which was unrelated to his pain). A specialist in Detroit nearly guaranteed that the tumor is benign. However, it will probably require surgery. The tumor in Aaron's arm doesn't explain the pain that he often experiences, though.

As Betsy's doctor told her, some of our family has souvenirs from the accident. 

Details

Dad holds Betsy's hand as he prays for her, before she was transferred by ambulance to the larger hospital.

A year ago, when I wrote a post from ICU in the early hours of the morning, I referred to the little details and big details that showed the hand of God. Here is a little more of the story.

• I didn't join my family on Brian's birthday celebration because I had tutoring appointments scheduled. The first appointment was cancelled. Despite circumstances that caused my second homeschool student to arrive late and leave early, we still studied algebra together. The student's mother considered canceling; her decision to continue with our tutoring session was the reason I wasn't in the vehicle. 

• Since I planned to meet the rest of the family later in the day, Dad suggested I carry Mom's cell phone (I am one of the few people stubbornly resisting a personal cell phone). Using the phone, I was able to contact family and friends.

• Because school was closed for MLK Day, David Byler was available to drive me to the first hospital. Neither of us knew where we were going, but by following his Dad's directions and the blue hospital signs we arrived at the Emergency Room without difficulty.

• When Betsy was transferred to the larger hospital, an hour away, the EMT switched on the reserve oxygen as the ambulance pulled off the expressway. Of the four people in the ambulance, Betsy was the only one who knew where we were going. Once again we followed signs, but still ended up at the wrong emergency entrance.

• The surgeon that talked to Aaron and me in the Emergency Room, after he was transferred to the larger hospital, desperately wanted a plastic surgeon to put Aaron's face back together. He wasn't sure that the plastic surgeon would accept the job, but he did. The plastic surgeon did a superb job!

One year later

Photo credit: Logan Cook

I tend to forget bad things. But I haven't forgotten the trauma of a year ago. My parents and seven of my siblings were celebrating my brother's eighteenth birthday when a vehicle ran a stop sign and struck our fifteen passenger van, causing it to roll. I've relived those moments and remembered the results of that collision every single day since. Over time the particulars may cease to be so vivid, but I don't think I will ever forget the emotions.

Kudos

     to the plastic surgeon.























(And, of course, the ultimate glory belongs to God)

Therapy

As Betsy nears being discharged from physical therapy, she is transitioning to performing her own exercise routine at home or at the college gym. While she has gained some of her strength back after the accident, she hasn't regained the endurance needed to work long shifts as a nurse. This week she commandeered the piano bench, a pillow and a couple of bottles of shampoo for her own exercise equipment. 

ICU, TCU deja vu

We went back to ICU and TCU, Julie, Betsy and I, Wednesday afternoon. We drove the streets, rode the elevators, walked the halls, breathed the disinfectant. We peered through the window in door to the Neuro Trama ICU. "You were in the room across from the nurses' station," I told Betsy. "And Aaron was a couple of rooms down from yours."

Since they were wheeled in on stretchers, when they were in the hospital Julie and Betsy had no sense of direction. I knew it too well--the waiting room with an ice machine, the restroom with a sink with a counter to set your contact solution on while putting your contacts in your eyes, closing time at the cafeteria, the nurses' station where they would give you a blanket at three o'clock in the morning.

Along with the main campus, we also visited TCU, where Julie spent five weeks. The nurses were delighted to see us. We laughed together, remembering the day the shower room flooded during Julie's shower extravaganza. We sat in the dayroom where Julie and I decorated cookies one day after she graduated to a wheelchair, and where I escaped to cry on the days Julie was depressed, and where all the patients gathered one day to watch the crack house across the street burn.

But this time we were at ICU and TCU for just a visit. After a few minutes we walked out together--all three of us--and came home together.

Bridge walk

Early morning walkers cross the Mackinac Bridge as the sun rises on Lake Huron. Governor Granholm led the way by running across the five mile bridge. Thousands of participants followed the governor on the bridge that connects Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas. (I took this photo as we drove to the St. Ignace side of the bridge where the walk began.)

Julie and Betsy walked the Big Mac. Every Labor Day part of the Mackinac Bridge is closed to vehicles and open for pedestrians. This spring, when our living room was still jammed with hospital bed and wheelchair, Julie and Betsy set their goal on walking across the five mile bridge.

Monday, seven months, two weeks and five days after the accident, they met that goal.

"Look for the red sweatshirt" Julie told me. Amanda, Kendra and David Byler joined Julie and Betsy in walking the bridge; they are somewhere in the crowd of thousands of people also walking across the bridge.

Five-mile-long, two-hundred-feet-above-the-water, suspension bridges aren't my thing so I declined the opportunity to walk across the Mackinac Bridge. My accomplishment of the day was driving across the bridge; I even kept my eyes open!

Kendra, David and Amanda skip stones after completing the walk. Photographing the Great Lakes is my thing and I had no problem amusing myself while the others walked the bridge.

Blueberry girls

Some of the blueberry girls resting in the shade after dinner at the blueberry farm.

We are the "blueberry girls." While Brian and Logan help with the blueberries too, most of the work is done by the ladies in our family. This year we make quite the team.

The other day I returned from the blueberry farm with the pick-up truck loaded with blueberries to be stored in our root cellar until market day. We transfer the berries in wooden carries that hold eight quarts of berries.

"Betsy, don't you do too much!" I called from the back of the truck where I was moving carriers to the tailgate. Then I noticed Lauren ready to lug a carrier down the root cellar steps. We sent her with the ice cream pail full of bad berries to dump in the chicken pen, since we didn't want her to hurt her back carrying blueberries.

About that time Julie commented that we blueberry girls made quite the team. Libby has bad knees; Julie has a healing pelvis; Betsy has healing kidney, liver and ribs; and Naomi has a pebble in her elbow that sometime causes her arm to swell and hurt.

We make quite the team of blueberry girls. We all have to work together because none of us could do the job alone.

Two years

The scene of the accident and the stop sign that Renee Bartlett ran in January. After the sentencing our family stopped at the scene and examined the site. Our new van is parked in the gravel lot where our previous van landed.

Monday, June 28 Renee Bartlett was sentenced to spend two years in prison.

Our family was given the opportunity to attend the sentencing of the woman who caused the accident last January that seriously injured three of my siblings. Several of us drove to the Isabella County Courthouse for the event.

The case was handled by the Isabella County Prosecuting Attorney on behalf of the People of the State of Michigan. Renee Bartlett was convicted, as a habitual offender, of reckless driving, and driving with a suspended, revoked, denied license causing serious injury.

After Renee Bartlett and her attorney spoke, the judge offered our family, as the victims, the opportunity to speak. Dad spoke. He acknowledged that God allows people and events in our lives for His purpose. He added that we hope Renee receives the help that she needs, and that our family has prayed for her and will continue to pray for her.

Then the Prosecuting Attorney shared his thoughts, and the judge pronounced the sentenced. A minimum of two years in prison. With that the woman, who walked (actually limped, because she too was seriously injured) into the courtroom a free woman accompanied by her husband, was escorted from the room by the bailiff as a prisoner.

Light

Shattered glass reflects morning light at the scene of the accident.

Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.

Instead they put it on its stand,

and it give light to everyone in the house.

In the same way, let your light shine before men,

that they may see your good deeds

and praise your Father in heaven.

Matthew 5: 15-16 NIV

Being a light on a stand is uncomfortable. Light is noticed.

Many times after my family was in an accident in January, I've felt like a candle balanced on a candlestick. I usually avoid being noticed and find the candlestick a narrow, hard perch.

Yet our family has been noticed. First responders, law enforcement officers, witnesses, doctors, nurses, therapists, judge, prosecuting attorney, family, friends, co-workers and neighbors in the past months, have all watched to see how we will respond to the event that has changed our lives.

Many people have commented that our family has an attitude of forgiveness. If, in ourselves, we could forgive the woman who ran the stop sign, causing the accident that endangered nine other lives and seriously injured three of my siblings, it would be extraordinary. I don't possess that ability.

The forgiveness we exhibit is only the reflection of the forgiveness we have experienced in Jesus Christ. Because of what He has done for us, we have no choice but to forgive and to continue forgiving.

So, if you see the tiny twinkle of a candle or the sparkle of shattered glass, give honor to the Light we reflect.

Unicycle

She rides again, though she dismounts carefully.

Five months

...God's faithfulness

and a frog

Betsy posing with her frog on her third day in ICU (before I snapped the picture she removed her oxygen so that she would look better).

When Amanda visited Betsy in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital she brought dark chocolate for me and a stuffed frog for Betsy. Amanda caught a glimpse of the heart-spotted amphibian in the window display of our favorite candy store and promptly bought it. The frog has been Betsy's nearly constant companion. He provided Betsy with color in her sterile ICU room. At home she hugged him as she breathed into her spirometer every hour. Now she holds him to insulate her arm from the ice packs she still uses to control the pain in her sides. After five months, the frog is a little bedraggled, while Betsy is returning to her usual bouncy, smiling self.

Brian wheeling Betsy to the vehicle on her way home after a ten-day hospital stay.

Forty days after the accident Julie came home from the hospital.

Can you find the frog? Leave a comment with the name of the post(s) where the frog appears.

Therapy

After thirteen weeks of therapy, Julie graduated. She had an appointment with her bone doctor Thursday. Beside no horse riding or extreme sports for six months, she left the office with no restrictions and no further doctor's appointments.

Substitute teaching

My sisters were excited Thursday. For the first time since the accident in January I accepted a substitute teaching job. "It makes it feel like we're getting back to normal," Betsy explained.

Betsy drove herself and Julie to therapy in the morning while I subbed for a half a day in the middle school.

One crutch

Julie ditched one of her crutches this week. After a good report from the doctor and the okay from her therapist Julie graduated to walking with one crutch. She may lose the other crutch next week if she can walk without a limp.

Julie's bone doctor was pleased with her progress. Her pelvis is healing just as quickly as it can. In fact, her body has concentrated so much on growing bones that it has neglected her big toe nails. She hasn't trimmed them since January.

Julie and Betsy attend therapy together three mornings a week. Aaron also began therapy to restore strength and movement to his shoulders and neck.