When Everything Was Out of Our Control

by Lynn Laidlaw

It was Tuesday, June 2, 2015 at our home in Detroit, Michigan where it all began. As we had done every Tuesday for a very long time, I had prepared dinner to take to our daughter and her family in Ann Arbor. Jim was helping me carry the meal out to the car; he placed the food in the trunk of the car, backed up and tripped on a crack in the driveway, and fell. He looked up at me and said, “I can't move.” In the fall, he had broken his neck and was paralyzed! EMS was called and he was taken to Oakwood Hospital in Dearborn where he had surgery. After being there a week, still paralyzed and in a neck brace, the doctor came into the room and said he was ready to be released, but he couldn't go home. In God's Providence, our daughter, a physician in physical medicine and rehabilitation at U of M Hospital, HAPPENED to be there and said: “I want him transferred to U of M Intensive Rehab," to which he replied: "He could never tolerate three hours of intensive rehab a day.” Well, that’s where he was taken! (That was the last time I was in our home in Detroit, having lived there for our 54 years of marriage.) I stayed with my daughter in her home in Ann Arbor for the six months Jim was in rehab and I spent every day at the hospital in rehab with him.

Jim received excellent care and therapy and eventually was able to remove the neck brace after he regained body movement, but was still unable to walk. He was later transferred to Glacier Hills for additional therapy and it was there that he began to walk.
He did so well that U of M readmitted him for additional therapy before final discharge.
(All this care was promoted through our physician daughter. Another God-incidence! But not to say that someone else wouldn't have received the same care.)
On November 18, 2015 Jim was discharged from U of M, in a motorized wheelchair, and together we moved into an apartment at Brecon Village, all prepared and set up by our son John (Detroit) and our daughter Ann (Ann Arbor). During these six months, nothing was in my control. I surrendered everything into God's hands and all decisions were not of my making! He took very good care of us.
Postscript: Our three "kids" took care of emptying our house, selling it and seeing to our care. Jim did well for a while, but soon encountered other problems related to the spinal cord injury, He ended up on a feeding tube, an indweling catheter and the last six months in long term care at EHM. He passed away on December 15, 2017. He was a special gift to me from God and I look forward to the day that I will join him in heaven.