Leaps of Faith

The last thing I said to Kim "the taskmaster" before he flipped the switch to "on" was, "You know, I really want to be able to live to see my 56th birthday next week!"  His response was, "You PROBABLY might!" With a grin on his face, he started the new therapy.  And that new way of treating "old lefty" was called, "High Voltage Galvanic Stimulation".  Sounds exciting enough to sign up for right now, doesn't it?  :)  Now please, don't all of you "message" me at once, ok?  There will be room for all, I'm sure!


I'm not even sure I can even explain the procedure, except at "first glance" it goes against every safety rule that my mom and dad taught me as a child.  It involved putting "old lefty" in a bucket of water and then inserting a probe that is hooked up to a machine that sends out electrical impulses into the water.  And when Kim asked me, prior to starting it yesterday at my P.T. appointment, if I would like my hair curled~well, I began to wonder what on earth I had agreed to do.  


So for the next 20 minutes, I received the "shock" of those electrical impulses for 10 seconds which was then followed by a 10 second rest period.  The action of the "charged" impulses caused the muscles in my hand to contract and as I watched the water, I could see that my fingers curled up, not to relax until the 10 seconds were over.  What a weird feeling!  


At first, it was a little unmanageable but I soon grew used to the 10 second "active" period.  In fact, after a while I was wishing I could have had 30 minutes rather than 20.  The whole idea behind this therapy is to help reduce some of the significant swelling that is in my wrist area.  This morning, 12 hours after having received it, I must admit that I think it did help a bit.  And as long as something helps, then I'm willing to at least give it a try.


As I  near what I "hope" to be my final weeks of doctor visits and therapy sessions, I am reminded of just how fortunate I am to have received the medical care that I did.  It could have been so much different had I been anywhere else in the world, in any other time. Thanking God daily for that these days.  I have had a lot of time to pause and consider all of this lately.


Friends, I have bellyached non-stop sometimes about how high my Blue Cross health insurance  premiums are these days while others around me have gone WITHOUT any insurance at all.  Between the two surgeries and additional care I have received, my hospital bills climbed to nearly $50,000.  Thankfully nearly all of it was covered by insurance~and YET I was complaining about paying high premiums? Without health insurance, there would have been no way that I could pay off that kind of bill in the foreseeable future, and I know it!  Geesch.....


I have been blessed with 2 doctors (Dr. Scott Goin of the Hutchinson Clinic and Dr. Prince Chan of the Kansas Orthopaedic Center in Wichita) who are wonderful surgeons, and what one was unable to do, the other one could do instead.  I haven't had to drive terribly far to get to either of their offices.  And thank goodness I finally started to learn to drive in Wichita~I can get myself to and from the Kansas Orthopaedic Center with little trouble.  I wonder how many people there are in this world who lives hundreds of miles from the nearest doctor or hospital.  Who helps them when they are hurt?  How many people live in this world of ours without any medical care at all?  I have a lot of time to pause and think about stuff like this lately.  


I live in a time where there are such things as "donor bone tissue", external fixator devices, casts made from lightweight fiberglass material, X-ray machines, and health care facilities that are clean and sanitary almost 99.9% of the time.  What would my predicament have been like 50 years ago, the early 1900's, or even earlier back in time? I've often said to people that if I would have been born in the times when Kansas was just a prairie that my family would have left me on the side of the road ready to catch the first bus back east.  They would have been tired of listening to me whine all the time. Imagine me breaking an arm back then.....nah, don't cause it's not a pretty picture.   LOL


I have had to take a lot of "leaps of faith" in this life of mine, with several of them coming since my August 4th accident.  I have to admit that, at first,  I really wasn't crazy about sticking my hand in that bucket of water yesterday afternoon.  My initial instinct was to say to Kim, "Hey, I'm sorry but my mom doesn't let me put my hand in a bucket of water when electrical impulses are shooting into it."  But I trust Kim and know that he will only do what is right for me.  He has my best interests in mind~he won't let anything hurt me.  


Oh yeah, and finally, it seems like it was a big "leap of faith" that got me into this mess in the first place.  You know, that belief I had that I could "leap" that curb on my bicycle like I was Superwoman, or something?  Well, sometimes leaps of faith are good for us and sometimes, ahem, ....not so much.  Yet today, I will still choose to try those things that I'm not sure what the end result will be.  Leaps of faith, for the most part, are wonderful things that just continue to lead us down the road we're supposed to be on anyway.  It's all "part of the plan" friends....just all "part of the plan."  Have a great Friday everyone!