not going to be paralysed!
The day after the accident, he was taken to theatre for surgery to stabilise the neck fracture. During or right after the operation, a blood clot lodged in the pons, a part of the brain stem. My child had a stroke. He was 26 years old and in real, serious danger of his life – and stayed there for months!
People sometimes report that everything feels “unreal” at a time like this, like a movie playing in front of their eyes. This was not my experience. Not a single moment felt mercifully unreal or dreamlike; every second was brutal, frightening, true, genuine terrifying! All I could pray, over and over and over, was the insignificant little word “please”. I kept repeating it, over and over – and waited and knew that a God Almighty had to and would make the choice. There was too much and too little I wanted to ask and pray. Besides, I didn’t know exactly what to ask since I really had no idea of the prognosis and consequences of a blood clot in the pons. The only choice I had in my ignorance – and exercised – was to trust the God over Life and Death with the word “please”.
Another, probably naïve, choice was to shift into an Old Testament mode immediately after the accident. I, who had never in my life been confronted by such a terrifying choice, tried to negotiate with God. “If I were never ever in my life again to do or say this thing or the next (or conversely if I were to do or say something), would you then please let my child live?” What could I offer or give up that would be of enough value to pay for the life of my child? I was more idiotic than Jonah, Peter and Moses together!
It’s strange. At times I would recall with sharp clarity some graphic images from a film I was working on at the time. The theme: How the earth was born. How everything had come into existence, according to the experts. I remembered the depiction of the mighty powers and explosions that helped form the earth and sea ... that tore continents apart and shifted the sea ... and every time prayed, stricken with fear, to get my child back, I remembered about an ordinary person’s depiction of the all-might and power of an almighty God. And then I knew that He, who could do that, could just give a single thought to my child and he would be well – he would walk and talk and live.
When everything collapsed around me, I remembered, through a movie created by humans, how He could transform indescribable chaos into order that surpassed human understanding. “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God brooded over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.” Strangely, this particular image kept on reappearing in my thoughts.
There was one very short passage in the New Testament that I read over and over – like an echo among cliff faces the end of which one cannot see – and repeated it in my mind. I held on to these few words above everything else.
Strangely, it wasn’t the part where Jairus’ daughter was raised from the dead. Neither was it the story of Lazarus or the one of the man whose son was healed when Jesus drove out the demons. It was none of the wonderful stories of miracles around sick people. I held on to Mark 4:35–41, where Jesus calmed the storm, and specifically His words: Why are you so afraid? Do you have no faith? From the whole Bible, these were the ten words I chose; my anchor when I felt I was sinking.
The hours and days in the Intensive Care Unit of two hospitals became weeks, and the weeks became months, and still I clung to those two sentences from a Bible with a thousand other encouraging verses. Just those ten words were enough for me!
During this time other, strange choices also appeared on my path.
At one point my son was sharing a ward with a man of Jewish descent. His brother was a rabbi. One day the rabbi asked me whether he could pray for my son. The question was simple, but the choice was unbelievably difficult in my chaotic mind. If I said “yes”, would God punish me and let my son die? Or if I said “no”, would God then let my son die?
There were other, similar choices: the Hindu woman who also wanted to pray for him and bless him. The woman from one of our sister churches who wanted to serve us with Holy Communion at his bed. The four women who invited me to their home and asked me to confess my sins to them so that they could pray for me and my son would get well. What was I to choose? Would my child die if I answered “yes” to all or some of these requests, or would he die if I refused?
Who could give me the right answers and show me the right direction? What would be the right choice? Should I ask my minister or should I wait until the right answer was revealed to me? Was this perhaps a further direct attack of the evil one to confront me with these strange requests and circumstances? How will I respond to these situations with wisdom and insight and, above all, with the right choices?
I didn’t know then and still don’t know whether, in my human frailty, I made the right choices or not. What I do know is that God’s might and mercy and love are greater than the worst choices we might make in life.
If I look back to that time of the most destructive storm imaginable in our life as a family, when we were nearly destroyed, I try to recall choices we had to make consciously as well as the choices we were unaware of.
My wonderful son was changed in the blink of an eye from a lively, young, dynamic doctor to a person who was locked into his own body. He could not breathe by himself, could not move and could not swallow – not even his own saliva. We had no way of knowing whether he could see or hear. We did not know whether he would survive. The doctors were open with us and did not give us much hope.
He was diagnosed with the feared and extremely rare condition known as locked-in syndrome or man-in-the-barrel syndrome (MIBS). Medical textbooks describe the condition as follows:
Locked-in syndrome is a catastrophic condition that prevents an individual from voluntarily moving any muscles of the body, other than those that control eye movement. As a result, the individual cannot move or speak, although some communication is possible through blinking or eye movements. Despite the devastating loss of function, an individual with locked-in syndrome is completely conscious and aware, able to think and reason normally. Luckily, locked-in syndrome is exceedingly rare. About 40%–70% of people suffering from locked-in syndrome die within a short time of suffering the causative injury.
For me, the situation was a definite reality, but my emotions were, in retrospect, not really in touch with any reality. I tried in vain to rationalise and “realise” everything, especially my choices as to what I was or was not allowed to do, or what I had to or did not have to do.
There was a small Catholic church on the way to the hospital where my son was lying, and I would stop there to pray. I simply prayed my usual prayer of “please”, and even that was initially a problem for me. Suddenly even that was something I had to make a conscious choice about. The question then was: “Should I not rather look for a Protestant church that might just possibly be open, and rather go and pray there?” How ridiculous and confused my fears and anguish were about the choices I had to make!
My everyday choices were necessarily also influenced by what well-meaning people said around me and to me. Words like “These things happen only to people who can bear them. I would never be able to bear such a thing.” Immediately the anguish would come again: What have I done? Did I perhaps have an arrogant attitude? Could my God be testing me in such a distressing way to see whether I can indeed bear such pain? Did I make a wrong choice somewhere along the way?
Or other words that stuck with me for a long time: “Yes, such things happen to a person to call you back to God, to remind you (and all of us) that we must mend our ways … if we and all his friends don’t take this as a wake-up call, I guess nothing will ever bring us back to God.” Then I thought: But have I wandered so far from my God that He had to use something so terrible to bring me back? What awfully sinful choice, or choices, did I make to
