Coping with Uncertainty

There are certain times in everyone's life when a change occurs that brings on uncertainty.  The future may seem uncertain and our way to go through a challenge seems unclear.

I felt all of these emotions after my late husband's Dean's "successful" surgery to clip a basal aneurysm.  He made it physically through the surgery but mentally he was not himself

Dean had a long way to go in recovering and there were many anxious moments in his recovery as we later discovered that the odds were dismal in making it through a recovery.  The first week after surgery it looked as if Dean might have to have open heart surgery but he had an excellent angiogram so it was a false alarm.  Next it looked as if he might have to have a shunt surgery as the fluid in his brain was not draining properly.  To our relief that passed.

The worst problem was in dealing with his thinking.  For several weeks he was saying things that did not make sense.  The doctors told us that he would not remember being in the hospital and to our amazement they were right.  The staff even told us he could be mentally impaired for the rest of his life.  He was assigned physical therapy and he "woke up" on an exercycle with no memory of his stay in the hospital.

Every time I became discouraged or fearful, I would go to the hospital chapel and pray and it would amaze me at how quickly a situation would resolve.

Tomorrow I will share how I dealt with the tremendous financial challenges that came my way.