Waves and Shadows will describe the complete disruption of a life that appeared to have settled into a time of our retirement years with traveling, camping and simply enjoying our home, family and friends. I could not have seen what was coming in October 2021. A disclaimer is in order because of the nature of this horrific time, not just for us personally, but globally. An attack was unleased on humanity by an enemy that had no face (at the time) and with a force that was unexpected and undefended.
I'm simply telling our story as it unfolded without judgment of the medical community that was also caught unaware and ill prepared, yet controlled by those with the power to harm an unsuspecting world.
I survive through prayer and staying in God's Word each day, journaling my prayers, His Word, and emotions that could otherwise engulf me. I offer no advice on how to grieve, rather share how the Lord has brought me through each day beginning with my husband's hospitalization. If it's helpful, thank Him.
I will be adding more entries I made in my many journals since the week BW (Bud to many) entered the hospital, if you care to follow this journey. My prayer is for God to use this effort as He chooses and to give Him the glory for any encouragement, especially for the saving faith that comes only through trusting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. John 3:16.
LOOKING BACK
June 9, 2023
One of the scriptures from Praying God's Will for Your Life by Stormie Omartian was Psalm 41:1-3. When I returned to my Bible in my quiet time today, I saw that I had read Psalm 41:1-2 on October 18, 2021, in the early morning hours. I often turned to the Psalms during those middle-of-the-night, sleepless times. Looking, begging really, for a word of encouragement.
On the eleventh day of my husband lying in that hospital bed in ICU, separated from everyone he loved most, I prayed these words would be a promise of his healing and recovery. He had been in the ER several other times with complications of COPD and pneumonia, then sent home with medications and instructions to rest until he recovered. I expected this would be the case this time.
Psalm 41:1,2:
"How blessed is he who considers the helpless; the Lord will deliver him in a day of trouble. The Lord will protect him and keep him alive, and he shall be called blessed upon the earth. And do not give him over to the desire of his enemies."
BW had always considered the helpless. In his twenty years on the Oklahoma City Fire Department, he barged into burning homes and businesses, looking for victims and working to extinguish flames to save property. He was a certified NAUI Instructor/Diver on the Underwater Rescue and Recovery team. He would don scuba gear and dive into the murky Oklahoma lakes to look for drowning victims. On one occasion, he recovered murder weapons that led to the conviction of the guilty. On another occasion he knew the heartache of recovering the lifeless body of a small child. He had never told me about this, but he tried to share the experience in a Dale Carnegie class at our church. Emotions overtook him, and he could barely say through his tears, "Teach your children to swim."
One summer afternoon, he did revive a toddler that had slipped into the lake at the family's boat dock. The little boy was under water long enough that he had stopped breathing by the time BW made it from our dock to theirs. God had prepared him for "such a time as this." The revived tyke was taken by ambulance to the local hospital, and we would soon learn that he was fine. He made a full recovery.
BW's lifelong career in roofing and construction meant helping those who could not help themselves in repairing their own homes. He donated his time and energy in mission projects in Mexico and Thailand. On any given day he could help a stranded motorist with car repairs on a gallon of gas, his day was complete.
Whether he was fully decked out in fire department gear, diving tanks, or blue jeans and a T-shirt, he was always wearing the heart and soul of a hero. Surely, this passage of scripture was the promise, the assurance, I was desperately seeking.
BW died that evening at 9:41 PM, October 18, 2021.
I cried through those verses again tonight.
My close friend Mary LaFrance called from Washington state in the middle of those thoughts and tears. She scanned through the remaining verses of Psalm 41.
Verse 7: "All who hate me whisper together against me; Against me they devise my hurt, saying, 'A wicked thing is poured out upon him, he will not rise up again.'"
Verses 7 and 8 spoke to the pandemic, biological warfare some would say, that had brought BW to this place. As he continued to require more oxygen, the nurse told me they had taken him off of the Remdesivir after having given it to him for four days. I was never informed that he had been given that drug, and I told her as much. We had a conference call with BW, daughters Gea and Mandy, and myself. His nurse was at this bedside. When the nurse mentioned the ventilator, BW said, "Nancy doesn't want me to do that."
My reply was, "O, Honey. I can't make that decision for you."
He stated in definite terms, "If I need the ventilator, I want it." My husband was a fighter, and he was not ready to give in to this attack.
The nurse responded, "I have the DNR in my hand. If he agrees to the ventilator, I'll tear up the DNR and have him sign a release for the ventilator." (I had asked the nurse prior to this time if she had seen patients come off the ventilator and recover. She said she had. I had heard the opposite was true more often than not.)
But now...some choice. A DNR - Do Not Resuscitate - or a ventilator proven to have a lousy record for saving lives.
I would later learn from printed and published material that, on average, Oklahoma hospitals received $219,000 for each patient who was diagnosed with COVID, was given Remdesivir, put on a ventilator, died, and COVID was listed as the cause of death.
Based on that information, BW entered the Oklahoma Heart Hospital South on October 7, 2021 with a price on his head.
The first conversation I had with BW's pulmonologist, Dr. Nazir, who had cared for BW's COPD issues for years, was when he called to say that things were not going well for my husband. I begged the doctor to put him on Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine, the two medications successfully given to President Trump when he had COVID, but Nazir flatly refused. He said they didn't work. When I told him I had heard they did work, he told me I had been lied to.
My husband was on his death bed. What harm could those two medications have possibly done.
Psalm 41:9: "Even my close friend (his doctor?) in whom I trusted who ate my food (took money for his fees?) has lifted up his heel against me."
I had tried to get BW transferred to Baptist Hospital. At least he would have been given some vitamins there, but their rooms were full, and BW's doctor would have to release him to get him transported to another facility. When I asked BW if he wanted me to pursue that option, he said, "No. They're taking good care of me here." (Verse 9: "in whom I trusted.")
Mary continued to scan through Chapter 41, then exclaimed, "Here it is. This wraps it up."
Verses 11-13: "By this I know that You are pleased with me. Because my enemy does not shout in triumph over me. As for me, You uphold me in my integrity. And You set me in Your presence evermore. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting. Amen and Amen."
God answers our prayers from His eternal perspective. Job 14:5 tells us our days are determined. That the number of our months is with Him. He set the limits that we cannot pass.
Gea and Mandy agreed that it was for their dad to decide about the ventilator, yet my doubts haunted me. What if I had kept him at home and looked for one of the doctors who would have prescribed the two meds that have since been used successfully for others? But he had already had one fever spike at home that we were able to bring back down. Now the percentage of his oxygen level was dropping into the 80's.
My niece Tara is a home health nurse, and she had said earlier that oxygen that low would mean taking him to the ER. When I asked BW what he wanted me to do, he said, "I guess you need to call the doctor." The nurse at Nazir's office said to get him to the hospital.
I'll always regret letting my fear and emotions overtake me. Rather than spend that 20-minute drive to the hospital in tears, I should have reassured him. When we arrived at the ER, I did manage to pull myself together enough to tell him he would be fine, assure him of our prayers and once again tell him of my love for him, that we needed him to get well and come home!
Since we had been out of state within a certain time frame, I was not allowed to go in with him. I would wait in the parking lot for about four hours while he was tested for COVID and the diagnosis was confirmed. We talked a few times by phone, but he needed to rest more than he needed to talk. Once he was admitted to the hospital rather than come home with me, I had to drive away. Alone.
After his death, I was still grieving over the scenario and the lingering feeling of "What if...Gea simply said, "Mom, what if you had kept him at home,. and he died anyway?" She couldn't have known the power of those words in that moment. BW had said before COVID struck him that if he ever had it, it "would get him" because of his COPD, but that he knew he was on God's watch, he knew where he was going, and he was not afraid. Ken and Mandy would reassure me with the same wisdom in the face of that haunting question that refused to die.
In reality, if he had died at home, I would never have been convinced I had done everything I could possibly have done for hm.
I searched more scripture. During this nightmare the time with God and letting His word wash over me was what kept me in complete reliance on Him. It sill does.
BW was in a Catch 22, a no-win situation. Only God could have saved him.
And He did.
He saved my husband from staying in a fallen world where evil was running rampant and destroying lives as it pulled hard on our freedom in all walks of life. If BW had survived, his health would have been even more compromised. He is now fully healed and living in the presence of Jesus, under His constant protection, living the life we all crave and watch for.
Satan did not win that merciless battle. Jesus did that on the cross.
Daniel 4:35: "All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; He does according to His will in the army of heavens. And among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand or say to him, 'What have You done?'" (NKJV)
Not only can we not know God's timing for us, but anything we try to do to change our appointed time to be in Heaven will be in vain. And His word says that He is not accountable to us for His sovereignty. That's why our relationship is defined by faith for our number of days and for where we will spend eternity. His great love for BW was/is stronger than any love and desire we have for him to be here with us.
Acts 17:26: "And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own posts have said, 'For we are also His offspring.'"
Psalm 116:6 "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints."
Luke 16:22 "So it was that the beggar died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom."
The scripture in Acts 17 tells us that not only did God pre-determine our time on earth, but also "the boundaries of our dwellings." BW regularly thanked God for placing us in America. Often, he mentioned that we could have been born into a land of no freedom and with no means of self-support. He truly was a thankful man every day, and he showed that with a heart of compassion and by using his strength to work hard until the last few weeks of his 75 years.
