Limbo

Greg and I existed in a slow dance of careful whispers for at least half a year. He regained some balance, and as he got better, or I should say, the better he got, the angrier he was as he realized what had happened and how much he had lost. I went back to work, and often came home mid-day to make sure he was ok. He resented my "hovering". I resented his "anger". He continued to have seizures, and I might come home to find him curled up with awful injuries, cuts, gouges, and lumps, disoriented and bloody. He was afraid of the water. He hated food he had loved for years, and loved something new, only to despise it the next week. We went nowhere together except when I drove him to doctors appointments. Let me cut these 6-7 months short; they were grim and awful. Skip forward to a fight with his neurologist and lost of phone slamming. I got an appointment with a new neurologist, and we started out on a one-year journey that was difficult, but rewarding. The new doc worked on his meds, tolerated his belligerent behavior -checked it off to frustration and said it was progress - and finally, we all settled for a new implanted device called VNS. Vagus Nerve Stimulator.

VNS was, at the time a fairly new option, and basically involves implanting a device in the chest that pulses electric charges up through a wire clamped onto the vagus nerve in the neck, which goes into the brain. Doesn't always work...it's a 33% chance that it will make a difference. At this point, Greg decided to take a leap. February 2001, he had the implant. Two weeks later we went back to have it activated. He woke up the next day, and woke up, made me coffee, woke me up and asked me to take him out to breakfast. He hasn't stopped yapping, making me coffee for breakfast, or wanting to go SOMEWHERE, for EIGHT YEARS!

Somehow, through those very difficult months, he did not give up. And looking back, I'm glad he was angry, because angry was something, and he was not going to give up. My tribulations pale in comparison to his heroism and fight to come back.

Next: Here we go....