[jdviole2]

I have been thinking a lot about all the illness and injuries Helena suffered in the years we were married. The first and up to her death the worst came in the mid 90's. We had been in our second house for only a few years when I got a call at work. It was Helena and she told me she felt funny. She sounded strange to me so I started immediately for home. When I got there she was sitting on the edge of the couch leaning back and stiff as a board. She was out and totally non responsive. Our cat was sitting by her side licking her arm and hand, trying to get a reaction. Her mom had told me before we were married about the bleeding in her brain she had when she was just a teen. I knew that there was a chance it would happen again and I think I suspected that this was it. I called 911. At the hospital I met with a neurosurgeon who told me that she had an AVM (Arterial Venous Malformation) basically a tangle of blood vessels that she was born with. It was leaking and she needed immediate surgery. It was our good luck that he was a professor of neurosurgery on a teaching rotation in the hospital. When she came out of surgery she went to Intensive Care. Half her head was bandaged with a drain hose coming out. They had shaved half her head. She was unconcious. She stayed out for almost 6 days. Finally my mom got her to open her eyes and she began to wake up more fully after that. What the bleeding and surgery had done to her brain was unknown. She might not be able to speak, she might not be able to read, she might not even remember who I was. It was very hard waiting for her to wake. She couldn't talk since there was a breathing tube down her throat. Before all this we had been discussing that fact that I did not want to wear contact lenses anymore. She wanted me to continue wearing them and I did not. It was a heated debate. One day I went in to her room and she was fully awake. Up to now I didn't know if she even remembered me or not. I went up to the side of the bed and before I could even get any words out she pointed to my glasses and waggled her finger back and forth. She was continuing the discussion. I was so relieved I almost burst into tears. She remembered me, enough to nag me about the glasses. She couldn't talk so I brought a small pad of paper and pencil with me the next time I went to see her. The doctor and the nurse both were skeptical that she would be able to write at all. I handed her the paper and pencil and she began to scrawl words on the paper then gave it to me. The spelling was bad but I could read the words "you came home". The doctor was sure that her cognition had been affected and was very surprised when he saw me smile. I told him that the note refered to her call to me when she had the bleed and the fact I came home to her. Not only could she write but she remembered what had happened just prior to passing out. She spent a week in the ICU, two weeks in Post Intensive and another two weeks in a regular hospital room. Then she had to go to stay in a rehab facility for a month. The place she was sent for rehab was actually a geriatric facility that had some available beds and were looking to make some more money by doing rehab. Helena was the youngest person there and the person closest to her age was over 30 years older. She had not had her hair washed for two months and was anxious to get that done. She moved in on Monday and they told us that since bath day was Sunday she would have to wait a week before she could get her hair washed. She was really pissed. The next day when I got over to see her I noticed that her hair had been washed. I told her I was glad that they had washed her hair. She just looked at me and grinned. I then realized that she had gone into the bathroom and washed her own hair in the sink. I knew then that she was going to be OK. And she was. While she was in the ICU I wanted to take a picture of her so she could see how banged up she was. Everyone, my mom, the doctor, the nurses, all told me that would be a horrible idea. Soon after she got home from the rehab she casually mentioned that one thing she wished I had done was take a picture of her with all the bandages and tubes so she could see what she looked like. That was my girl. Todays first picture is of Helena outside of Disneyland. Taken in the late 70's this was her third separate trip to Disneyland. The second picture is of her and her mother at a viewing stand at the trial gardens. The third shot is Helena (from behind again, I must have really loved her butt) crossing a field of slick rock. I don't remember exactly where or when this was taken. Note the small pile of rocks just to her left. This is a trail marker. When in this type of terrain you need to leave markers like this. The idea that from each marker you can see the prior and the next marker. I taught Helena this and then she took the lead on the hike. The fourth picture is another one from her dad taken in 1973. The next picture was also taken by her dad in May of 1974. This was taken the day before our wedding. And, yes that is me in the picture. The last shot for today is another "resting on the trail" picture. There are so many of these since it was the only times during the hikes that she was still long enough to get really good pictures. Probably in the early 80's for this picture and in Colorado.