A visitors observation

Probably Lenora's toughest battle this morning was fighting to stay positive in the midst of her still being in the hospital. All the unanswered questions are wearing her out. Pray she can keep her spirits up!
I'll have more later...

Below is an article written by my good friend Delmar. He's been a real support for me and the rest of the family. His sister is one of Lenora's super close friends but has been at Bible school in the US since before Lenora went to Winnipeg. Delmar has been her eyes and ears back home.
You will notice he's a writer - it is physically impossible for him to write short articles!! :)






A visitor’s observations:

I came into the hospital just like usual and made my way through the maze to the elevators and went up to floor 5 – GA-05. I ignore the sign on the door that says “No thoroughfare” and just enter the wing like I know where I’m going.

Just then I notice Justen has returned my text telling me where they actually are – cause they moved Lenora to a different room recently. Thankfully I was on the right track and headed down the hall.

We (Loretta Bartsch, Jennifer Plett, Clifford Penner and I) see the Loewen family gathered and head over that way.

“Hmm… what ever happened to her head??” I wondered to myself as I saw that they had cut a couple inches of her hair on the top of her forehead and a very obvious U shape cut with staples.

I hadn't been aware that they had done another surgery on her recently – I couldn’t quite get which day that had happened.

“Hi, welcome here,” she said, shaking our hands. “Please don’t be offended that I don’t smile – I just can’t.”

When she talks, it appears to me that she has no control over her lips at all; that makes her words quite a bit less clear to understand.

We sang some songs – softly, so as not to cause a disturbance – and if I heard right it seemed like Lenora was singing as well as the rest of us; chances are I heard one of the other girls though, I don’t know!

I had brought my laptop with a message on it so we could have our “Sunday service” there. It was almost quiet time for that ward and the doctors came to do a brain test on Lenora so we had to leave; we went and hooked the laptop to the big screen in the lounge and listened to the message while “some people” took a nap.

All of us young people went for lunch at about 2 PM; but first I set up the laptop for Lenora so that she could watch/listen to it on her own too.

Later when we came back I discovered she had watched about half of it – 20 minutes worth. She said she had started feeling somewhat dizzy and therefore quit.

“So how are your eyes, can you see well? Can you see me?” I asked, standing a typical 4 feet away.

“I can see you – at that distance I can see your eyes,” pointing to Loretta, “and I can see what you are wearing.”

“Can you tell if I’m looking at you or not?”

“Well, I think you’re looking at me, and I can tell your smiling.”

“So you can’t see across the room and see people?”

“Not clearly; I can see when the nurses come to me and often I can recognize them by their shape and how they walk.”

“Can you read ok, or is that a problem?”

“It’s different; sometimes I can read one psalm and sometimes two before I have to stop. I find it somehow easier to read on my iPod then from paper – I don’t know, maybe it’s because of the light behind the text.”

“How about your hearing? You have any problem with hearing?”

“Oh no, I have no problem with hearing; I can listen to stuff anytime.”

She does have the Bible on her iPod and would also enjoy audio books to pass the time.

We had some humor and I noticed that when Lenora laughed, her face does not change at all; she starts shaking if she laughs hard enough and times you can hear her, but she will keep a perfectly straight face as if she didn’t even hear you.

She is still pretty weak from my observation because when she was going to show us the wound on the back of her neck from the big operation a few weeks ago she needed help to turn unto her side a little more.

From overhearing some conversations it sounds like the doctors are perhaps almost as frustrated with not being able to pinpoint the causes as we are.

~~Written by Delmar



"There's no God like Jehovah!"