In 1986 my brother's wife called me, and told me that Roger was in the hospital, he had experienced a fall and injury working his 2nd job on Saturdays. He was primarily a lineman for an independent telephone company in North Georgia, and his Saturday job was also working on poles, but instead servicing or installing cable TV lines. I had something "important" that day, and thought I would go to the hospital the next day. It was over an hour to the John L. Hutcheson Memorial (Tri-County Hospital) in Fort Oglethorpe, and I needed several hours to set aside for the trip.
It was not till a 2nd phone call that I learned the seriousness of his injury... of course, falling off a telephone pole SOUNDED serious, but his wife's voice had seemed so calm, I wasn't really concerned. "You'd better come, he's on a ventilator." To this day I hate those things...
It was not till arriving at the huge, sprawling complex of one of the decades long "finer" trauma hospitals in that area that I learned his "diagnosis and prognosis." The pole he was working on was rotten, and had broken. When it fell, he, being strapped to it, was able to ride it safely to the ground (good).... and then it bounced, and landed on top of him. Not good. He was crushed in the middle part of his body, hips and ribs had become shrapnel that shredded tissue and organs in his abdomen.
I've never seen, in decades of hospital visits, anything like his situation. There were 5 tubes and portals (a clavicle) pumping or dripping fluids into his body, and 4 draining things out. The ventilator was making it's continuous sounds, but he was completely oblivious in his medical unconsciousness. I did not know that his team of three doctors had already determined that he would die. Slowing the 4 realizations: he would die of lung failure, since they were so damaged. Or he would die of kidney failure, due to the injuries received. Heart failure was imminent, due to the damage to so many blood vessels, and the stress. Or the infection from all the ruptures in his digestive system, similar to anunchecked appendix rupture, would take his life. The doctor team had decided NOT to do any surgeries, it was simply be useless, and torture his body more. He would die, slowly slip away. Hour by hour we watched, and waited. A nurse sat on a stool beside him 24/7, monitoring every device in the room. I remember crying on my bed, a praying a simple prayer: "Lord, I have buried 2 (mom and dad) I cannot bury another one right now."
There was also a curious complication... since he was working on a second job, his health insurance was balking at paying for his hospital care!! Finally they were persuaded that "insurance is insurance" and they had to step up. And then, a more 'curious' complication. He kept on "NOT DYING!!" Every day was not his last, it was his next!! The team of doctors decided they had to start some repairs in different areas. Can't let him mend like he was! Each surgery helped. But the crushed pelvis was very challenging, bones splintered and... no reasonable way to repair. BUT, there was a young doctor on his first assignment there, freshly returned from Switzerland, having learned a new technique of setting bones from the outside in. This procedure had never been tried in the USA, but it was the only option.
So, if you've ever seen Tinker Toys assembled in wild fashion, this became their plan, and it's gruesome. Drill through the flesh into the bone fragment. Screw a stainless steel rod into each fragment. With slow, time-taking brute force, shift the fragments together like puzzle pieces, so they can mend together. Then all the rods on the outside are bolted together like a child's wacky science project. And it worked! He was written up in the New England Journal of Medicine. Thankfully the stuff was covered most times by a sheet, and he looked like he hugely pregnant. He was slowing brought back to consciousness, and could move enough to communicate by touching letters of the alphabet.
Weeks passed. One Sunday afternoon some men from his work came to visit his wife in the waiting room, and I thought that was very nice of them. His wife was sobbing, I thought touched by their kindness. Then she shared the conversation: Because my brother had NOT CALLED IN to the office for his 30 day absence, he was going to be terminated the next day, including all benefits!! WHAT?? I'm sitting 20 feet away, smiling inside at how nice to take Sunday afternoon to visit the hospital, and these guys are terminating a 20 year employee in the CCU, projected still to die, because he hasn't made a phone call?
Thankfully, the union he was a member of stepped in, and explained the possible scenario for the company should they proceed with termination. They backed down from their "proposal." Meanwhile, my brother, greener by the day, still continued to "not die" (had 2 young sons at home) which created continuous medical challenges to repair organ by organ, muscle by muscle, bone by bone. Months are now ticking in ICU. And he keeps improving! Still, ever other time I visit him, I have to step out and drop my head to my knees, to not faint from the horror of what my eyes are seeing.
He was eventually moved to the Rehabilitation Unit!! Sitting up in bed, Lisa and I visited one evening, and he was talking, smiling (still bolted together!) and eating some soup. Then, frightening to me, all the lights went out, and every hum in that hospital went quiet. I prayed "Lord, after all he's been through... don't let him die for a power outage!!" I looked up, and realized that all that equipment was really gone from his body... then I thought of the 30 bed CCU where he had lived, and thought how all of those critical patients would quietly slip away. Yet not a life pump beeped in alarm, no crepe soled nurses ran down the corridors, just all quiet.
Then through the open window, I could hear a sound that reminded me of bulldozers coming up to full throttle under a heavy load... The UPS system was coming online, and full power was immediately restored in that massive complex. Even the fluorescents came on. When disconnected from the TVA power grid, the diesel generators automatically responded, and took over the entire complex... I tried to climb through the window, I wanted to see this "one more miracle!!" I looked up to my brother again, and he was picking out carrots from his soup: "Who would ever put sliced carrots in tomato soup?"
What the Lord spoke to me, and the lesson I learned through all this, was like an audible human voice from the Lord: "Tom, when you get to the point of disconnect from THIS world, and all that you see and depend on, and worry about, you'll be able to see that MY POWER is already there, fully available, more than fully capable. You choose."
If you see my big brother today, and walk behind him, you will see a little "shimmy" in his walk, but walk he does!!! Much older than me, he approaches 70, and IS STILL WORKING for that same phone company!!
No matter how bad things get, there is always HOPE. "Never Before," is God's invitation to: "Watch Me Work." What are the chances of a doctor just returned from Switzerland with knowledge of a new technique ending up via New York City in Northwest GA? How many people survive 4 medical death sentences at the same time? How many people keep their job, when the bosses and board have decided to fire them? How many people get their story written up as a "first" in the New England Journal of Medicine? And how do you replace an audio/visual lesson from the Lord: "When you're ready to make the change from this world's power to MINE.... it's here, and I'm ready and ABLE. The GRID is not the power source, I AM!!"
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