My Recovery from Heart Attack

MAY 15 – Making my way back

                       My arrival at Mil Park Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa.

    The man on the left is the flight doctor. Right is the nurse who tortured me for hours.

      I think it was the night I came home from the hospital for the second time after the infection that I was sleeping in a recliner in the living room at the Barton’s flat where we were staying. It was far too difficult for me to lie in a bed because my whole upper body hurt from having my sternum cut open and my ribs spread apart. When I turned in the bed I could feel my ribcage being pushed out of shape so it felt lopsided. I would simply push things back into shape but the muscle pain, though not excruciating, was always with me and my torso was still bruised from the surgery. I had wanted so badly for a miracle so we could go back to Gulu. I had prayed intensely for a miracle so that might happen but it was increasingly evident this was not the kind of ailment that goes away in a day or two.

                                 A world class surgical team performed my surgery

                            They cut through my sternum and used a spreader to access my heart

      I was thankful just to be alive, but I didn’t want to go home. I was feeling depressed and sorry for myself. In some ways I felt like a failure for leaving the mission after less than two full months when we had made an 18 month commitment and were feeling such success. I never served a mission as a young Elder but have looked forward to serving as a senior missionary for at least 20 years. Uganda was the perfect mission for Eileen and I and I didn’t want it to end this way or so soon. Then suddenly, in the middle of my pity party I felt a strange sensation of warmth come flooding over me until it covered my whole being. I started to cry. I couldn’t help it. I tried to stop but I couldn’t because I felt completely reassured at that moment that everything that was happening to me was no accident. It was all by design and was all part of a greater plan that I didn’t know about or understand. I began to understand that there is another plan for our mission and it’s not our plan. But whatever the plan is it will play out on the Lord’s time table. My job, for the next weeks and months was to be patient, work on recovering as fast as possible, and accept whatever is in store for us as what the Lord really intended for us all along. So that is what I decided to do—wait and work toward recovery.

                          A stint wouldn't work so a vein from my leg got my ticker workin' again.

                 Super glue instead of stitches left a nice neat scar like this one

      The next 5 weeks or so were very difficult. I was sent home from South Africa to the U.S. with a catheter in place because after my night of torture with Ugly Nurse my bladder was distended and couldn’t send signals to my brain when it was time to urinate. Long story short, I couldn’t pee. The urologist at Milpark Hospital wanted to operate. Dr. Chabra, who is a urologist, encouraged me to hold off and let the bladder regain its normal shape in a few weeks so it would start working normally again. That sounded much better to me so that’s what I did. It took two weeks for me to get in to see a urologist but when I told him my story he said, “Here is what we will do. We’ll try an experiment and see if things are working. My nurse is going to back flush sterile water into your bladder until it’s full. Then we’ll see if anything comes out.” He left and the nurse injected water back up into my bladder through the catheter tube. When I couldn’t stand the pain any more she pulled the tube out, gave me a cup to catch anything coming out and left the room for a few minutes. When she returned she said, “I put in 130 cc’s. Now I’ll go measure what is in the cup but it looks like 135 cc’s.” She goes out and 5 minutes later the doc comes in and just says, “Congratulations. Everything seems to be working properly.” He shakes my hand and sends us home. Thank you Dr. Chabra!!

 I took my physical therapy in this building and from the picture windows on the top floor I had beautiful views of San Antonio.

     It took much longer to get in to a cardiologist. I was gaining some strength but was still sleeping a lot and the pain in my chest and upper back were always there. I didn’t want to be around the family much. I moved slow and seldom smiled or joked. I just was not myself. I have never experienced anything like this and was slowly becoming depressed. When I finally did get in to see my cardiologist, Dr. Mancuso, I was really happy when he said, “My goal is to get you to a point where you can do anything you want to without fear of having another heart attack.” And I said to myself, “I’m going to do everything I can to help you achieve that goal!” I started working on that the same day by taking a slow walk on David’s treadmill for 30 minutes. The machine was set on the slowest speed of 2 miles per hour, but that was all I could do.

After finishing P.T. I started working out at this Health Link gym.

      A few days later I started physical therapy (P.T.). People say that PT stands for Pain and Torture. I said that too when recovering from shoulder surgery several years ago. The pain was excruciating but this was different. I was sore. The wounds from my drains were still healing and pretty raw. It was an ugly sight to look in the mirror. I had shooting pains in my pectoral muscles and spasms in my upper back muscles. The PT who did my assessment gave me a bunch of physical tests and then told me he wanted me to start walking every day for 30 minutes but not to worry about speed or distance. So I started walking. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 2:00 o’clock I was with my regular PT, Careese Ngyuin who gave me a set of exercises every day that was challenging. I worked hard every day and sweat like a mule. The first two weeks was all leg work and nothing that would put stress on my heart, but that changed after two weeks and she started working my arms and legs and finally mostly upper body work. Some of the exercises were grueling, like sitting on a stool with wheels and using my legs to claw myself 3 times around the therapy room and by the end 4 times. I hated that. It was so exhausting but I never quit. I just wanted to get better.

 

      Every day I worked hard and was dripping sweat but the improvement was there after every session. I really looked forward to going to therapy and I felt so bad for other folks who had strokes or young kids with musculoskeletal problems. They didn’t seem to improve like I was. But I just stayed focused on one thing which was to return to the mission field in some way. A good friend asked me it is was really physical therapy or therapeutic recreation. I had to think about that because I really enjoyed going to therapy. I looked forward to it because I knew it was helping. Certain exercises were painful or boring but boxing was great fun even though my shoulders hurt after just a 30 second round. Careese would pair me up with a mail intern who would hold these target things that I would punch away at. I don’t think it was much fun for them because eventually I could punch pretty hard. It was definitely recreation. Plus the people there were very friendly and the atmosphere was informal and non-clinical feeling unlike the PT I got at Milpark Hospital. The PT gym was on the 4^th floor of the building with huge windows all the way around. When I was on the bike or the arm bike I could look out and see the San Antonio Temple in the distance and think about what my goal was.

     After a few weeks it was no longer painful just to get out of bed and I could sleep on my side, not just on my back. It became less painful to sit in church. The chapel benches and metal folding chairs were murder on my upper back and when the pain got to a certain level I’d have to lean forward with elbows on knees and head in my hands. But that got better a little each week. It was funny how certain types of seating could be really painful but others could be very comfortable. I always looked for a chair that would give me lots of back support and allow me to recline just slightly.

      Little by little I could feel myself getting better. Each new day was just slightly better than the last but it was enough that I could tell the difference, especially after a therapy day.

      Finally it was the middle of June and I don’t know what happened but one day I turned a corner and started feeling like my old self. The beginning was one afternoon when David and Eileen were working on a huge new flower bed in the back yard. It was a hot day and it looked like a lot of work. But for some reason I just went and started to help expecting that I could last about 15 minutes. But oddly it felt good to be doing something useful even though I hate gardening. I stayed with it until they were ready to quit for the day. And I didn’t feel physically drained when we were finished. The next day, while David was at work, Eileen and I laid down weed barrier over the whole thing and staked it down. I was feeling much better and wanting to do more. It was amazing! It had been so long since I felt really alive and I wondered how long this recovery would take. Nobody told me anything about what to expect as far as recovery. But now I knew I was really getting well. I started thinking that before long maybe I could go back on a mission.

 When I first went to the gym to work out I could only use the 8 pound dumbbells but slowly worked up to 10, then 12, then 15 pounders. 

      July 4^th was a good day for me. Didn’t do much but that night I was eager to help the kids light off their fireworks. I was feeling almost normal but still very cautious not to get too rambunctious. I was making great progress in physical therapy and a few days later I had an echocardiogram. I looked at the machine but could tell nothing from the jagged green line on the screen and when I asked the technician how it looked she just said, “The doctor will go over all of that with you.” It was almost two weeks before I saw him and I just had to wait.

       When the cardiology appointment finally came the doctor asked me a few questions. He didn’t really explain to me the results of the echocardiogram. I couldn’t tell if he thought I was doing well or not. He just said matter of factly, “I’d like to see you again in October.”

“October I thought! I want my life back NOW!!” I tried to explain that we are missionaries and that I feel pretty good and we would like to get back out into the field as soon as possible. He just said, “Okay, I’ll see you in October.” I was bummed when I walked into physical therapy that day.

Dr. Mancuso, my cardiologist.

      

      A while before this President James E. Slaughter of the Texas San Antonio Mission had contacted the Bishop of the ward we are attending to see if we would be interested in working in the Mission Office for a year. The Bishop told us he had called but we were not excited at all about working in the office so we never followed up. But after that cardiology appointment we realized things were not moving as fast as we would have liked so we set up an appointment with President Slaughter to see what he had in mind. We called him and left a message.

Eileen introduces a friend to Mission President Slaughter and his wife at Sister's Conference

       To our surprise he showed up at our ward and we met with him after church. We talked about possible ways we could serve in the Texas San Antonio Mission or the T-Sam as we call it. Two things that sounded attractive to us was an assignment on the Mexican border in Eagle Pass. Years ago in Michigan I volunteered during the summer with migrant workers from there and I have always been curious about where they came from. The other was the San Antonio Food Bank which serves 58,000 people from 16 counties in South Texas. We visited Eagle pass but decided to give the food bank a try. A few weeks later we visited the place and signed up to volunteer. We had a long ways to go but were on our way back to being full time missionaries.

April 27, 2015 - Farewell to Uganda

FAREWELL TO UGANDA

A feeling of sad melancholy came over me and my eyes teared up as I looked out the window of a small Lear jet and saw a cluster of round huts with thatched roofs fade into the distance until they eventually disappeared beneath a layer of clouds. I couldn’t believe I was leaving Uganda this way. I felt fine. I was supposed to speak in church in just a few minutes. I didn’t want to leave a place and the people I loved after just 6 weeks. It couldn’t be…but it was!

 Our last views of Africa

April 27, 2015 - The Heart Attack & Our last day in Gulu

I woke up about 5 am on Sunday, April 27, 2015 with a severe pain in my sternum; or at least I thought it was my sternum. I thought it was the worst indigestion I’d ever experienced, but “if I just lay still it will go away” I thought. But it didn't go away, so I thought, “If I just sit up it’ll go away,” but it didn't. For the first time I thought just maybe I was having a heart attack.

But it didn’t feel like a heart attack; or at least what I thought a heart attack should feel like. I didn’t feel like bands were tightening around my chest so I couldn’t breathe. My left arm felt perfectly fine. I wasn’t sweating. I didn’t have any of the symptoms I thought I would have if it were a heart attack. It was not at all what I thought a heart attack would feel like. Not at the moment anyway. But just to be safe I thought I would call Elder Chabra, our mission medical director in Kampala.

Elder Chabra has the calmest way of dealing with patients and I had worked with him to help some of the young Elders who lived across from us with their medical ailments like boils and such. He never presented a sense of alarm when you talked to him and he was very reassuring. But I could tell from the tone of his voice that morning that whatever was happening was serious. When I told him my symptoms he just said, “Oh boy” in a tone that let me know he was concerned. Then he calmly asked, “Do you have any aspirin?” We did, so he said “Well take an aspirin and I’ll call back in 15 minutes” as calmly as if I just had a headache.

 

About that time I started to notice a tingling in my left arm and numbness in my hand. My legs started to feel shaky and I was sweating profusely. When Dr. Chabra called back and when the pain had not subsided he said, "You're having a heart attack and you need to get to the hospital right away. They won't know what to do when you get there so call me and I will tell them what to do."

Our house in Gulu. Eight Missionaries lived 50 feet from us in 2 similar houses.

With that I told Eileen to wake up the missionaries in our compound and tell them to come with oil to give me a blessing. Next I heard Eileen pounding so loudly on the metal door of the Elder’s houses. “What is taking so long?” I wondered as I wiped my face with a dirty shirt I grabbed from the laundry basket. My arm was growing more numb and I wasn’t sure my legs would get me to the missionaries’ truck. But soon I was surrounded by 8 young elders who prepared to give me a blessing.

Elder Barret, who was in his first area and fresh out of the Missionary Training Center did the anointing and his companion, Elder Lechiniment; who was be going home on the next transfer gave  the blessing. Oddly enough I never felt any fear and the thought that I might die never crossed my mind. I remember very clearly that he said I would “be able to return and finish the mission.” That was good enough for me! I never once thought my life was in peril. I had complete faith that a plane would arrive in the morning and take me to South Africa as planned. As the Elders left our house I could feel advancing numbness in my left arm and jaw. My legs were also becoming very shaky.

As I walked to the Zone Leaders' truck I wasn’t sure my legs would carry me the 30 feet or so that I had to cross  to reach the door of the vehicle.. By now my left arm was completely numb and my legs felt very wobbly. But I made it and when I pulled myself inside I said to Elder Wolfenstein, “Gulu Independent Hospital” and off we went.

We got to the hospital and the entry gate was closed. Elder Nyony jumped out; went through the unoccupied guard house; opened the gate and we drove in. He and Wolf found an old wheelchair and wheeled me into the Emergency Room. But it was Sunday. There was no doctor there. As luck would have it though, one doctor appeared on the scene. He was not scheduled to work but lucky for me his wife was having a baby at that same hour so he was there.

As Elder Chabra predicted, the doc didn't know what to for me. Yet even though Dr. Chabra is a Urologist he new exactly what to do and told the African doc exactly what to do over the phone---“Get 2 nitroglycerin tablets and administer them sublingually (miraculously the pain left immediately). Give him oxygen NOW. Do an ECG and tell me what the results are. Monitor his vitals and don't leave him alone.” There were probably some other things but as far as I was concerned the horrific pain stopped and that was my main concern. The numbness left my arm and I started to feel very normal. No pain. No fever. No vomiting. I felt fine! I wanted to go home and get ready to give my talk in church.

It wasn't long after that that I received a phone call from a Dr. Bruce Barton from South Africa. He told me I was going to be life flighted to South Africa for surgery. Bruce is the Area Medical Director over 23 African countries and he started asking questions. "Is there an airport in Gulu?" "Yes." "Is it a dirt runway or tarmac?" "I don't know." "Ok, I'll call you back." Surprisingly, after the pain stopped and I felt perfectly fine I thought we should just go back to our house. I was actually slightly embarrassed to have caused so much trouble.  I had no idea how serious this was.

There were phone calls back and forth between Gulu, Kampala and Johannesburg all day as Bruce worked to set up the life flight for early the next morning. Did the airport have a dirt runway or tarmac? Would international law require 3 pilots or just two? Was there an ambulance that could be standing by to get me from the hospital to the airport? Were there volunteer pilots, a doctor and nurse ready to go that night? 

I stayed in the ICU all night. I knew it must be the ICU because the large room with 3 antiquated hospital beds, a part of a baby incubator, a couple of oxygen machines and 1 old monitor for vital signs had a key in the door with a cardboard tag on it with letters in ball point pen, "ICU."

They put me on the newest of the old beds which I was grateful for, though I was a little disturbed by the dried blood on the sheet, presumably from the last occupant. But beggars can't be choosers I guess. Meantime my wife was sent home and instructed to pack all of our stuff and be ready to leave for South Africa by 7:30 am the next morning. We could only bring 14 kilograms on the flight and it was uncertain whether she would be flying with me or on a commercial flight the next day. Everything depended on how much fuel the plane would need to make the trip, how many pilots were required by international law and how much space there was in the plane. It was a stressful day for her for sure, having to get ready to leave; wanting to be at the hospital, never sure of my condition, having limited phone contact with each other, changing plans in the flight status through the day and night, etc.

Kickin' back in the ICU at Gulu Independent Hospital

I felt fine the entire day which was good because the level of care in the Intensive Care Unit was neither caring or intensive. At one point I felt the chest pain returning and a nurse came and gave me another nitroglycerin tablet. I last saw the doctor about noon after his baby was delivered. I asked him what all the numbers meant on the machines and he told me. That info came in handy that night as that was the extent of my care for the day. It didn't matter too much because I had people with me all day and evening. Five friends came to see me from the Gulu Branch. That was very nice. I appreciated them because I could see their clothes were damp from walking in the rain. It rained all afternoon and nobody goes on the street in the rain. In the evening Elder Oliphant from Zimbabwe was with me and he told me that Uganda was very backward compared to his country. But from 10 pm until 5:30 a.m. as far as I could tell I was the only person in the entire building.

Friends who walked in the rain to see me in the hospital

About 11 pm I noticed things were very quiet in the hospital and I hadn't seen a staff person for a few hours. I got curious so I unhooked myself from all the machines and went exploring. All the lights were on but I couldn’t find another soul in the entire building. Not a doctor, a nurse, a house keeper or anything. As far as I could tell I was all alone. I got a little scared so I started watching the machines much closer. 

Since I was now my own physician/nurse/whatever, I monitored my own vitals. I was a little scared so I was watching the machines much closer now My blood pressure was always in the normal range but my pulse became erratic and started dropping quickly. I was worried  but wasn't sure what to do. When my pulse got down to 49 beats/minute an alarm went off on the monitor but nobody came to my aid because nobody was there. My pulse kept dropping and I figured that 0 would be a very bad number to have so I had better do something. So I started slowly waving my arm as I laid on my side. Every time I raised my arm my pulse rate increased 1 beat per minute. So I continued to slowly raise and lower my arm until the rate got up to 60 bpm. When I stopped moving the red number in front of me would immediately start dropping..59, 58, 57, etc. about 1 number every 5 seconds.  I watched the monitor until the rate got down to 50 and I’d do the same thing again. After about 3 hours of this my pulse stabilized and I felt fine again.

When I had to go to the bathroom I just shut the machines off, disconnected myself and went to the closest restroom to the ICU. In fact I was just headed back to the ICU when the life flight crew arrived in their blue jump suits and carrying all sorts of equipment under their arms. I said, "You must be the life flight team." They were shocked and said, "Are you the patient? What are you doing up walking around?" "I had to go to the bathroom" I told them.

The Flight to South Africa--In just minutes they had me back on my back, hooked up to their ECG machine, a saline drip, checking my vitals, etc. After doing all of that they put me on a stretcher and wheeled me to an old beat up old ambulance and we headed for the airport. I remember the flight nurse taking one look at the vehicle and asking, “Is this the ambulance?” with a tone of surprise. And just before we left the Dr. made an executive decision----Eileen would fly with me, even though it meant he had to sit on an uncomfortable jump seat for the entire 7 hour flight.

Volunteer Doctor sits on a jump seat behind me for 7 hours

The flying hospital was pretty crowded.

I had tears in my eyes as the plane gained elevation and I knew I was leaving a place I had come to love behind. We landed briefly in Entebbe to refuel the jet and for Eileen to take care of passport control and customs. By the afternoon I was safely in Johannesburg where I was loaded into a modern ambulance and taken to Milpark Hospital with its world famous cardiac unit.

I was taken to a world class hospital for cardiac care

The Ugly Nurse--I wish I could say I passed the night comfortably at Milpark waiting for an angiogram early on the morning of April 29, but nothing could be further from the truth. I was placed in the “theater” which was a big ward with 10 beds. Each bed had a nurse covering each patient with a chair and table at the foot of each bed. Every nurse had a huge sheet of paper to use for charting. All of the nurses were black and all of the patients were white, which seemed very odd. But I learned that apartheid is not completely dead in South Africa.

I had not urinated since before the flight team arrived in Gulu but nobody seemed to notice or care. Eventually I started to become uncomfortable. I asked for a urinal and my grumpy nurse brought me a big plastic bedpan. I tried to sit on it but I honestly don’t know how people can use those things so I set it aside and asked for a urinal. “Just relax” the nurse says. “But I have to pee.” She gives me some pain medication and goes back to doing nothing. By now I am in pain and ask for a urinal again. “Just relax, you’ll be fine.” “I can’t relax I have to pee.” I am watching the clock and it’s 10 pm. I last urinated about 9 a.m. in Gulu. I try to relax but before long I am writhing in pain and never taking my eyes off the clock figuring the angiogram will probably be about 7 a.m. About 11:00 I ask again for a urinal and tell the nurse I haven’t had my prostate medication for two days. Reluctantly she brings me a urinal but by then I can’t get more than a few drops out and the pain gets worse.

The nurse leaves my bedside and goes to another part of the room to chit chat with another nurse. She plants herself there and turns her back to me. I am thinking all sorts of bad thoughts about this woman as she ignores me completely.

By this time most of the patients in the theater are looking at me and the young nurses and the patients are concerned, but my nurse just gives me a couple more pills and keeps saying “Just relax.” I can’t figure this out. Is she doing this because I’m white and she can? I start to have all sorts of racist questions go through my mind because I am wondering if there is some cultural thing going on that I don’t understand? Why is she torturing me.

About 1 a.m. as I am writhing and groaning in pain, Patrick in the bed across from me is becoming increasingly upset because the nurse left me alone for about half an hour when she went to that side table and just chatted with the other nurse while I suffered. When she finally came back to my bed Patrick blurts out, “Why don’t you do something to help him?” At last I had an ally.

The nurse turned and looked at Patrick who was a heart patient from Rwanda. She turned at looked at him. Then without a word she went somewhere. When she came back she had a syringe which she stuck into my I.V. line and injected some form of liquid into it. “This will help you relax” was all she said and walked away. Almost immediately I could see she was right. My pain subsided and I started to relax. Then I quickly position my plastic urinal and wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, I started to pee! I am so relieved! Liquid just flowed continuously into the bottle and before long I did relax and fell asleep. When I awoke I was being taken for my angiogram. My big ugly nurse was gone and my night of torture was over, but unfortunately because of her lack of concern I now had a distended bladder which caused me problems later on. But right then I didn’t care and I fell back to sleep as they wheeled me away.

Meeting My Doctor--The next time I woke up the angiogram was over and my cardio thoracic surgeon was standing by my bed. Dr. Essop was his name and I liked him right off. He told me what happened with the angiogram and asked if I wanted to see my heart. I still felt no pain, no fever, etc. so when he put the sonogram thing on my chest I expected to see a perfectly normal heart. What a surprise!

I could see the heart plainly and it was obvious I had a major problem. The lower chamber was expanding and contracting normally at a pretty good clip. But the upper chamber was moving about half the speed and looked like a bear lumbering through the woods. Then he told me I would need double bypass surgery. Because I was already on a blood thinner he told Eileen it would be messy but he could do it.

That’s all I remember until I woke up in the recovery room. I was groggy and when I looked down I saw 5 tubes coming out of my body and I noticed I had another tube down my throat. But I didn’t care because I didn’t have to pee and ugly nurse was nowhere around. I went straight back to sleep and slept all that day and most of the next I think. At least I don’t remember anything.

 

I pretty much just slept the first days after surgery.

The next thing I remember is seeing Dr. Essop in my room with two nurses. He said, “They’re going to remove the tube from your throat and the drains from your lungs and the one from your heart. I looked again at the tubes coming out of my chest and side. Not a pretty sight. But I wasn’t in pain.

As they removed the tube from my throat I wanted to remember what that was like because I couldn’t really swallow but it wasn’t irritating. As one nurse started to remove the tube I could feel it coming out, all the way from my stomach, up through my chest and finally out of my mouth. It felt like it must be caked with crud so I kept my eyes closed the whole time. I didn’t want to see it.

The drains came out very smoothly. Then I drifted off to sleep again.

Discharged at last--After 6 days I was discharged to stay at the Barton’s flat. I was so glad to get out of the hospital though I was still very weak and slept most of the time. But less than 24 hours later the hospital called Dr. Barton to tell him my blood test showed I had an infection that could only be treated intravenously and to get me back to the hospital immediately. And in less than an hour a missionary couple picked Eileen and I up and took me back to Milpark for 6 of the most boring days one can imagine. They said it was too risky to treat me as an outpatient so I stayed there and tried to endure the most awful food imaginable. Eileen and I would go down to the coffee shop and get a milk shake or piece of cake that was delicious. Every day when they brought the menu I checked the same items each day, which were the few things edible---scrambled eggs, oatmeal, juice, yogurt, rice.

 

Too weak to walk much but being outside was nice.

 

 

With the help of other senior missionaries Eileen got to do a few fun things.

Eileen in front of the Johannesburg Temple

The Phone Call--I was discharged on a Friday. On Saturday I got a call from Dr. Barton. “You’ll be going home tomorrow or Monday at the latest. You’ll be getting a call from Elder Egan who is arranging your flight.” I was stunned. Just the thought of having to fly such a distance in the condition I was in was overwhelming. I had walked around the block but had to rest half way. I wasn’t excited. Soon Elder Egan called, “I have your itinerary ready. You’ll be leaving tomorrow and will fly to Joplin, Missouri. “We can’t fly to Joplin, our house is rented out in Kansas. We have to fly to San Antonio to stay with our son,” I came back. “I’ll call you back,” he said and hung up. A few hours later he called with the revised itinerary. We would leave Sunday night. I was not physically ready to make the trip and neither of us was emotionally ready to leave Africa. But we had no choice and no control over anything once again.

The Trip Home--We arrived at the airport in plenty of time for our flight but had to get all of our belongings through security and to our gate which was a very long ways away. It was all I could do to make the distance, trying to walk, wheel a carry on back and carry my computer bag. By the time we got to our gate I was completely worn out. We hadn’t even found a seat when we heard on the loudspeaker, “Would passenger Ferguson please come to the counter?” We thought for sure there was some sort of big problem. As we approached the counter the agent said, “Dr. Barton just called and he has upgraded your tickets to first class.” That was such a relief because the first leg of our flight was 16 hours from Johannesburg, South Africa to Atlanta. Just the thought of flying in coach with other people in the same row, crawling over me to get to the bathroom sapped my energy. As it was we both had nice seats that folded back into a bed and nobody would be crawling over anyone to get to the lavatory. I was able to sleep much of the way and watch movies in reasonable comfort. We requested wheelchairs a wheelchair for me in Atlanta and Dallas which made the transfer and flight much easier.

I was so happy to get to San Antonio but I was exhausted. I went straight to bed and slept for 12 hours. The next day I started my slow and painful recovery period.