Another Re-birthday


Tomorrow will be the anniversary, my "re-birthday" when life stated over from square one. Thirteen years ago I heard the word "hypermobile" for the first time. I was 39 years old and a chiropractor had just rotated my neck and commented on my extreme flexibility.

That first side of my neck adjusted upon first attempt, but the other side just wouldn't realign. After multiple attempts, my vertebral artery was ruptured in the back of my neck and I instantly experience two catastrophic (either should have been fatal) brain bleeds (strokes) there on the treatment table, initially triggering a seizure, blindness, slurred speech, and a rapid progression to loss of consciousness.

I was in the hospital for nearly 2 months, shocking doctors that I even survived the first night. I had to relearn how to breathe without a machine, swallow, see, hear (we eventually discovered I had lost 70-90% of my hearing), sit up without two adults holding me, bladder control, and everything a new baby must learn.

Over the first 26 days, I had 4 more strokes (a total of 6) as the artery tried to heal and kept throwing new clots. Every day, I wasn't expected to survive another day. Two experimental, emergency surgeries on Thanksgiving Day finally stopped further stroking. I was to live out the remainder of my days as a "vegetable" in a nursing home. I would certainly never walk again!


But God... I'm now 52, walking with a cane (that I'm growing less and less dependent upon), seeing with special glasses, hearing with hearing aids, and still baffling doctors that I'm even alive with "as little brain tissue as you have left" (a doctor's perplexed words to me about 6 or 7 years ago). There are still some things I haven't mastered, like basic math, or driving, paperwork management, and coherent writing without wandering off in every direction a bagillion edits needed to accomplish readability. My memory, the long term but especially the short term, is so unreliable! But I look and usually act "normal" enough now that most people don't even realize I'm disabled when they very first meet me now.

I'm practicing long-passage (whole book) Scripture memory as ongoing brain training, using the Bible to very literally renew my mind. While I don't retain the ability to quote a long passage weeks after I have learned it (recitation videos to keep me accountable, most current work found by clicking the "live" tab), this daily practice keeps my mind sharp, heart refreshed, and I trust the Holy Spirit that He will use what I've intentionally deposited in my heart, when He needs to remind me of specific truths.


I'm pretty open, so feel free to ask questions. My @ is InfertilityMom on most social media, if you care to connect other places as well. (Currently, I'm most active on Instagram , through I've gone through fazes, sometimes preferring Pinterest, Twitter/X, or Facebook, so all the links are below.)

All Scripture on this post is quoted from the Legacy Standard Bible (LSB).
Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com

I would love to meet you through social media:


Specialty pages:
    infertility / loss - fb.com/HannahsHopeBook
    stroke - fb.com/StrokieGal
    current book project on church deception - fb.com/DeceptionUnmasked

Instagram @InfertilityMom
Pinterest @InfertilityMom

My books:

Read about my current book project about deceptions women face from within the church, at JenniferSaake.blogspot.com/2021/04/DeceptionUnmasked.html


Read more about infertility, miscarriage, adoption loss, and my first book, Hannah's Hope (written pre-stroke), at JenniferSaake.blogspot.com/2021/04/hannahs.html

 
Please enjoy a free pdf version of the introduction, my personal infertility / loss story, and the first chapter of Hannah's Hope at www.hannahshopebook.com/media/HannahHopeChapter1.pdf


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reset

Image
I, Jennifer Saake , stumbled into the online world in my mid-early 20s, around 1995 or '96. As you may have noticed, I've been fairly quiet this past couple of years. Here's why. After processing my own journey online for so long, last year I sort of ran out of words and went into public hibernation. As I prepare to once again start fresh in an attempt to plunge back into the blogosphere, here's my backstory, divided into about 10 sub-headings so than you can skim topics. (Many of the headings are linked to more detailed pages.): Infertility, Miscarriages, Adoption Losses Three years in, our infertility and loss journeys became lived out in the public eye, as God allowed me the incredible privilege of interacting with tens of thousands of other grieving women, both through  Hannah's Prayer Ministries  and then, a decade later, with the publication of  my first book , Hannah's Hope: Seeking God's Heart in the Midst of Infertility, Miscarriage, & Adoptio...
Read more

Mom of 3 has 6 Strokes in Her 30s

Image
  What happened? I've given you the back story and the (long) update 10 years later . Now for the event itself. I ended my back story with, " Since 2-3 day migraines were part of my world as often as every few weeks, with the occasional 10+ day migraine a few times per year (my record had been over 30 day when hormones were adjusting after my daughter's birth), I let the headache and accompanying symptoms keep me down in bed for about a week before getting proactive and heading to my doctor for pain shots, then on to the ER again (at my doctor's insistence) for something even stronger. After trying all they knew to do, ER sent me home without relief on the evening of October 24, 2011.  My decision the next morning impacts my life and the lives of all who love me, to this day." So what was my decision? I did what is commonly done with headaches, one of the specific things their services are advertised to help. I went to a chiropractor. Yes, I had used chiropractic...
Read more