A Life Turned Upside Down

Keith loved his job driving the bus for the city and talking to everyone. We started attending a Pentecostal Church in Alindre and later the girls would attend the local Christian School. Both of them would be big life support for us and their prayers helped carry us through our traumatic experiences. I babysat and volunteered at our daughter’s kindergarten, and I was expecting again but during that time Keith was complaining of pain. I was tired, looking after Tammy, so I didn’t take him too seriously and I just thought that he was being dramatic. His brother Kevin and his wife were going to church and they would drop him off at the hospital. It wasn’t long until the things turned and Keith called from the hospital and said he was having an emergency appendectomy. Oh I felt so bad that I didn’t take him seriously, he just didn’t seem in that much pain. I phoned the prayer chain, his family and tried to contact Kevin at church and asked for prayer there too. Keith came home and over the weekend he came down with a headache and he went to laydown. I was very tired and went for a nap when our daughter Tammy did. When I woke up, it was to Keith acting very strange and I thought that he was purposely trying to bug me. I phoned his sister Sue and she asked to speak to him but Keith wouldn’t respond or take the phone. She said that she would drive out with their sister Bev and that they would be right there. I realized later that I should have just called an ambulance or took him to a doctor when he has the headache but sometimes your brain doesn’t believe what you are experiencing or understand it. We must have taken Tammy to a sitter and called the prayer chain again. I tried to get Keith’s cowboy boots on but it was in vain, being pregnant and without his cooperation, it was a difficult task. Somehow we were on our way on the highway and the thirty minute drive to the hospital seemed like a eternity. Keith looked over at me and said “ Hi” , I responded back to him “Hello”. The next thing I know he is trying to open the car door and he is trying to get out. He was rushed into emergency and they started all kinds of tests and they suspected meningitis, so a spinal tap was ordered. Not easy for anyone let alone someone in his state and I hear it is painful. This was in April of nineteen eighty-nine , Keith was twenty-seven years old, and our second child was due on June twenty-first. He did have meningitis, he was in a coma for about a month. When Keith came out of the coma they realized he had suffered a stroke, was paralysed on his right side, with memory loss and speech complications. He didn’t remember who anybody was and he called everyone Kevin like his twin brother. Here I was his pregnant wife, with our six year old daughter and he didn’t know us.