The Day it Happened

As best we can determine, Bettie's challenge began on Tuesday, June 23, a few minutes after 9 a.m.

(A little personal background here may help: I am employed at iShip, Inc. a subsidiary of UPS, the shipping company. I work in their offices every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday; I work from home on Fridays, using the company intranet. Being something of an insomniac, I awaken one or more times throughout the night. When it's a work night, I just get up and go into the office. So I'm often there in the wee hours of the morning, but seldom past noon. It's kind of crazy, but it works for me, and the wonderful people I work with are very accommodating. My usual habit on work days has been to give Bettie a brief check-in call between 8 and 9 a.m.)

I first called Bettie at about 8:40 that morning. I got no answer, but that occasionally happens if she is in the bathroom or something. I called again just a few minutes after nine. She answered, in a normal sounding voice, with "You're late". Not saying "Hello" was a little unusual, but maybe everything was normal to that point.

After those first two words, our world changed.

What I heard sounded like she was crying at first. (That has happened before ... she called me at work years ago to give me the news that my grandmother had died. When I answered that call she couldn't speak for a minute or so, so I thought it was something like that.) I gave her a few moments to compose herself, but it didn't happen. It sounded like she was muttering or something.

We knew she was at risk for stroke, due to a heart condition called atrial fibrillation that she had been dealing with for about six months, but realizing that I was actually hearing one happen took a minute or so to sink in. I finally said something like: "Honey, I'm going to call 911 ... Do you want me to call 911?"

I made out "911" in her garbled response, but that was all. My head was spinning, this was the real thing!

I hung up and punched in 911. Since I was at iShip's Factoria office, I got the Bellevue police response center but they quickly connected me to Auburn and I gave them the required details. Paramedics were there in minutes and found Bettie in bed and mostly unresponsive.

I locked up my computer, told a co-worker: "I'm leaving; I think my wife may have had a stroke", and took off for home. I'm not careful to always have my cell phone with me and have it on, but that day I did.

Ten minutes into the trip, my son Tim called me and put one of the emergency team guys on the phone. (Tim, his wife Veronica, and their two children live with us. Being self employed, he might leave for work anytime between 7 a.m. and 10. This day, he happened to still be home.) The emergency team guy told me they were taking her to Auburn Regional Medical Center, so that was where I headed.

On arrival I provided the registration desk some quick information, then I found Bettie in ER room #1. I suppose the initial reaction one has in a situation like that is akin to what you might feel when the sheet is pulled back in the morgue and you realize that, yes it's her.

The doctor was busy determining the extent of her condition, asking her all kinds of questions, poking, prodding, touching, all with speed and precision. He did his best to fill me in on what he was finding as he proceeded.

Though her eyes were about half open, there did not appear to be much going on in there. It was then that he first used the word "Stroke". Though not a surprise, given her history of atrial fibrillation, hearing that word came down heavy, like hearing a jury foreman saying, "Your honor, we find the defendant guilty of all charges."

They soon whisked her off for a CAT scan of her head to actually see what was going on.

Upon return, the doctor detailed it for me: "She has a very large clot on the left side of her brain, in the area where speech is centered. It is very serious and there are some very high risk issues you are going to have to decide right now." They wheeled in a cart with a flat-screen TV monitor and a camera on it. I was quickly introduced via video to Dr Aaron Heide, a stroke specialist who handles cases like Bettie's for a number of area hospitals. He explained that we had two high risk scenarios here: doing nothing, and doing something.

The something he proposed was to transport her to Highline Medical Center, in Burien, where another specialist, Dr. Wiess, could attempt to break up and/or remove the clot via a catheter inserted into her groin and directed all the way up to her brain using some very new, very high-tech imaging. While it offered the prospect of giving her a greater chance for some recovery than doing nothing, it also could create bleeding and ultimately be terminal. The doing nothing at all choice also had the risk of death, but with less chance for recovery.

By this time my son Tim had arrived at the Auburn emergency room, so at least I wasn't faced with this decision alone. Together we concluded that we would rather try the procedure than not ... so off we went to Highline.

Just before the procedure, which they said could take from one half hour to four hours, I met Dr Wiess. He's an intense, fast-talking professional who gives the impression that, even though he's talking about high-risk stuff, everything will be OK. I asked him if I could see Bettie before he began. He said no, that hospital procedure forbade that. He then, without a word, took me by the hand and led me to her side in the procedure room. He muttered something like "this didn't happen" and left me there with her for a moment.

I can't describe that moment without seriously soiling my keyboard with tears and drool, but it was intense.

In the waiting area I was joined by Tim and his wife Veronica, my daughter Kim and her husband Mike, Art Palecek, our associate pastor, and his wife, Maureen. Later, our previous associate pastor Steve Ambros joined us for an hour or so. We prayed and talked and ate lunch and waited and waited. "Wait" is not the right word for this kind of wait. "Wait" is something you do in check-out lines and at traffic lights. When the life of your beloved hangs in the balance it is something else. I'll think about that another time.

After about three hours, Dr. Weiss came in. He said he had good news and bad news. First the bad: because of the unusual amount of twists and turns in Bettie's veins, he was not able to get the catheter close enough to grab the clot nor inject it with a dissolving agent. It was close he said, very close. However the good news was that there appears to be some blood flowing around the clot so the damage is not as severe as it could easily have been. That bodes well for future recovery.

Bettie spent the rest of that day and night in intensive care. The gaggle of family and friends eventually thinned until I was left alone with her. Next to our wedding night, perhaps the most memorable of our nights together.

I talked to her, not knowing if she could understand. At one point she said "I'm too hot." I took that as a good sign, putting three words together. Another time she began saying the word "take". She must have said it twenty times or more. Finally she got out "care". She wanted me to "take care" of her. God, I love this woman.