The timeline, being in the right place, Walter’s birthday

Yesterday afternoon, a little after 1 pm Grandpa suffered what appeared to be a stroke. By the time Grandma had called Mama and communicate the need for help, Grandpa may have been experiencing the symptoms for about an hour since he had been outside the camper while Grandma rested inside. The additional hour it took to get Norman and Mama onsite and able to load Grandpa into the Sequoia (Grandpa was unable to use any of his extremities) allowing Mama to drive him at highly illegal rates of speed to the hospital, the cumulatively time before he received any medical care was about two hours. Extremely dangerous time lags in this type of time sensitive medical crisis. At that point it was about 3 pm.  

Once at the hospital, initial evaluations by the Emergency Room staff were fairly straightforward. An MRI revealed a blood clot in one of the major vessels supplying blood to the front left side of the brain. That had affected the right side of Grandpa’s body, paralyzing his entire right side. Our Pastor, who was at the hospital when I put the prayer request out to our church, met Mama and Grandma there and spent almost the entire time with them as they waited for any word on Grandpa. The decision was made by the local medical staff to call in Life Flight to transport Grandpa to a neuro care facility in Ft Worth. That flight left Decatur at about 5:20 pm. That put Grandpa at the Harris Medical Facility about twenty to twenty-five minutes later. Now the hour is approaching 5:45 pm.

Our understanding is that a neurosurgeon was called and waiting on Grandpa when the helicopter landed, and he was very quickly taken into surgery for the procedure that would attempt to remove the blood clot from the occluded vessel in the brain. What is fascinating is that several weeks ago, during a Training Day my company sponsored for all our employees, the techniques used in that procedure were discussed so I had a ready awareness of what was being done to help Grandpa.

Meanwhile, we gathered those things required for us to wait at the hospital where Grandpa would receive the advanced care, got everybody loaded in the Sequoia and headed to the hospital. That was about 5:30. We arrived a little after 6:20 pm, finally found our way to the correct area of the hospital complex and began our vigil. At 7:40 a nurse came to the waiting area where we had been requested to wait and told us that the doctor would be talking to us shortly. Dr. Fiesta, the attending physician, came to update us on Grandpa’s progress a few minutes later. It was good news overall. Actually, it was as good as we could have expected.

He had been able to remove the major clot from the primary branch it had lodged in as well as multiple other smaller clots that had squeezed themselves further up into the smaller blood vessels in the brain; the secondary branch in the circulatory vessels in the brain. That part of the procedure requires a level of skill that is very advanced even among neurosurgical specialists. The doctor related thought images captured during the process how each clot removal allowed blood flow to be restored to greater and greater areas of that frontal lobe where that blood flow had been blocked. What he did was more ambitious than many other doctors would have done and as a result, Grandpa may be far less affected by the episode. Time will tell.

The doctor gave us an interesting explanation of how the brain responded to the loss in blood flow by rerouting enough blood to the affected area of the brain through corollary circulation to keep the brain tissue alive. We truly are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” He related how most patients in this condition have a corollary response that takes about six seconds to accomplish the redirected flow. Grandpa’s time in the effort was four seconds and because of that the brain tissue may have suffered very little permanent damage. Again, time will tell. The wonderful part of this story is that if this episode had happened while Grandpa and Grandma were still in Florida, there would have been a far different, potentially far worse outcome. At the very least, it would have been far more difficult for Mama and Victoria to have been so far away during this type of traumatic episode. Not to mention how traumatic it would have been on Grandma to try to handle this by herself. God is good!

When we are able to see Grandpa last night, he was obviously heavily medicated, but clearly able to talk to us and answer our questions. He even smiled and joked with us. Greeting us with, “Well, I’m still alive.” That was a great relief to us all, especially Grandma. We left the hospital about 10:40 and were home a little over an hour later.

Mama, Victoria and Grandma will go back to the hospital this afternoon to check up on Grandpa and try to get some update on his near-term care. How long in the hospital? How long in rehab? That type of information. Norman, Tres, Seth and I will work on getting the RV moved to the farm so we can have Grandpa and Grandma close by. For some unknown time, he will not be able to care for Grandma as he has done and he himself will need our help more than has been required at any time in his life. There is a possibility that we could rent a two-acre spot across the road from us that is already set up for an RV, but we do not know for sure. Please help us pray about that. At the very least, we will trim enough trees to allow the camper to get onto our property without any roof damage. Big changes are coming to us all.

By the way, today is Walter’s birthday. He is seven years old today. How did that happen so quickly?