This has been a long week, and sometimes you learn a lot from long weeks.

Last Saturday my son called me and told me he had just talked to his mother and she was slurring her speech. When I checked, she was, indeed, slurring her speech, stumbling as she walked and going into a trance like state and staring off in the distance. Since she has already had two strokes, I called 911 and off she went to ER. 

This is where the education began.

Our son and I were both there. As the doctor quizzed Marsha, we found out that she keeps all of her current meds in a drawer as well as all the meds she has been taken off of over the years. This creates the possibility of her taking drugs that are out of date or that she has been off for a while. It was pointed out by my son that since I am seeing to her needs that I should have known about this and changed it. And he is absolutely right. My thinking was that her thought processes have not been impaired (seemingly) and I have been letting her do as much as possible without my interference. That has changed and I am making sure she takes the right medication when she is supposed to take them. And she is not happy.

But, even with that, it really did seem as though she was having another stroke. I told my son that I would not be able to get her to the bathroom and feed her and do all the other things that might need to be done simply because I am not physically able, to which he agreed. Now we were facing some dark decisions. 

After all the tests that exist, her neurologist, whom I am really impressed with, came in and told us that Marsha was not having another stroke. Apparently, they have discovered that a high percentage of stroke victims will develop, within a year, tiny little seizures in the brain at the point of the stroke. These mimic a new stroke but are not a new stroke at all. In the past they have been treated as strokes, but now are treated as seizures. A tiny little pill and Marsha is doing just fine. Better, actually, since all her medication is now under control.

Which brings to mind the thought that how can anyone believe that the human body is the result of evolution, when it is so complicated and intricate"? Evolution is an accident while such a level of complexity would indicate design. All living creatures must be the result of divine design. 

Marsha's doctor, renowned in her field, on the very cutting edge of the study of the brain and greatly respected by her colleagues, explained the function like this; "We really don't understand all of it, but for me it is enough that this is God's handiwork."

And that is good enough for me.