Her husband Tim faced the possibility of a brain-damaged wife, and caring single-handedly for five children, including a newborn. Meanwhile, Lindsey lived in a shadowland of nightmares, awareness and utter frustration. She writes:
I remember Tim holding one of my hands, a neurologist the other, and telling me to squeeze their hands. Unable to do so or to speak, I felt my brain screaming, "Why can't I do this? Maybe I'm dying." Later, my inability to use the call button left me banging a spoon on the bedside table for an hour and a half. No one came. They thought it was the repetitive motor response of a brain-damaged woman.
Two weeks after the initial dance on the edge came a death vigil. As I lay dying, the respirator whirred, pumping air into my lifeless-looking body and then sucking it out. … My limbs were blue and as cold as refrigerated meat. It did not look like I had any upper-level brain function. I was expected to die before morning.
I later learned that 40 or more friends and relatives stood vigil in the waiting room. … Susan, one of my best friends, looked at my gray, barely recognizable body and said, "Death is ugly, isn't it?" … My dad touched my feet and said, "I taught these feet how to walk." He agreed with Tim as he made end-of-life decisions.
Tim anguished over what to do, issuing conditional Do Not Resuscitate orders and rescinding them repeatedly. Then one day, Lindsey woke up. It was weeks before she could speak, but she was going to live.
I went into the hospital on August 30, 2002, and came home just before Christmas, still unable to walk or breathe on my own. In spite of daily physical effects of the trauma, I've learned that radical obedience (in my case, having a baby at 40) is worth any cost, that prayer is inconceivably important, that miracles still happen, and that I have a faith worth dying for.
Lindsey O'Connor, "While I Was Sleeping," Christianity Today (February 2004), p. 44
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