A Healing Story, just in time

It's a long story but the abridged version is my 83 year old Grandma was misdiagnosed with Bipolar Disorder about 11 years ago but it turns out she actually suffers from panic attacks.  About a month and a half ago she fell at her house in Pasadena and my dad took her to the hospital to be checked out. Once she was home a couple days later we got a call that she had pushed her lifeline button and she was being taken to the hospital in an ambulance because she thought she was having a heart attack. My parents went to visit her when I was at work and they said she wasn't doing very well. She could barely function because her panic attacks were consuming her. She couldn't sleep and she was mean and delusional. She was discharged and we brought her back to our house. She ended up living with us for about 2 weeks. These 2 weeks were some of the roughest times for my parents.  It wasn't as hard for me because sometimes she was so crazy it was laughable and it didn't hit as close to home as it did for my parents. I was also at work most of the day while my mom had to care for her. Although I couldn’t always be present I told my parents that I was their prayer warrior.

Throughout this whole time my family and friends were praying. We prayed with her and asked for God to heal her and restore her. She was nothing like the Grandma I knew. I cannot explain her state but it was like something bad had taken over her. She would say things like "the devil is after me and he's trying to get me but I won't let him. God is fighting for me". Even in her psychologically disturbed state she was still trying to look to God.

At the end of the 2 weeks her doctor finally decided that she needed to come into the hospital. When my parents took her to the hospital he suggested in Glendora, her doctor wasn't there. He was having a family emergency of his own so the people at the hospital were now responsible for her. My parents made up a binder of all her medications and organized the whole week's meds in containers (she was on 11 meds each day, 3 of them were psychotic and she also has diabetes) and gave that binder to the hospital so they could distribute her meds. When my parents took her to this hospital she was very angry and violent. 

My dad talked to her a couple times when she was at this hospital. She was doing even worse than she was at our house. Nothing she said was making sense. She said she was seeing things and hearing voices. At the hospital they gave her a CAT scan and saw that she had the symptoms of a disease known as Pix. It’s a neurological disease similar to Alzheimer’s but the symptoms are misjudgment, changes in personality, and high stress (It deals with the frontal lobes of the brain). No diagnosis was made but the doctor thought that was a disease she might have. After being at the hospital for 5 days the hospital called and said that she would be discharged the next day. We were trying to find either an at home caretaker or an elderly home she could go to but hadn't found one yet. When we got the call that she would be discharged we started praying that we would find a place that day and that it would be exactly where God wanted her. I asked a couple friends to pray too. No more than 2 hours later my dad called and said he went to a place called Alma Villa, 7 min from our house, that a man from his bible study had mentioned. He told them about the situation and they were checking to see if they had any availability. An hour later my dad called back and said they had one room available in the exact caring area my Grandma needed to be! Their funding was high this month so they had decided to waive all entry fees for the month of March…$2,000! On top of that, my Grandma really cares about how she looks and one of her favorite things is getting her hair done. This place has a hair stylist that comes each week to do the lady’s hair. It’s a beautiful place that is faith-based with a little community garden and wonderful staff.

It was a huge answer to prayer, everything fit. When my parents picked my Grandma up from the hospital the nurse told my dad that the doctor had prescribed a specific psychotic drug for her. So he said, “now she has 12 meds?” and the nurse said, “what do you mean?”. It turns out the nurses had not received the information on her drugs and did not take the effort to research what she needed so they had not given her one med the whole week! It was a miracle that her blood glucose stayed level the whole time because she wasn’t even receiving her diabetes meds. My dad had researched the psychotic meds she was on and he thought she was misdiagnosed and taking too many meds that could possibly be interacting wrong. We wanted to get her off all the meds and get her down to the bare minimum. With the psychotic drugs you can either slowly wean off them or you can do a pill free week where you basically detox. This is what happened to my grandma during her stay at the hospital. It was a prayer answered because it had to be done and although it was really hard it brought so much fruit. It was good for me to see all this. I now know that elderly people are commonly overmedicated and when I'm a nurse (hopefully) it will be super important for me to check out what's going on and be aware of that. There were so many errors by the doctors and nurses that led to my Grandma being at a worse state. But guess what? God turned every single bad thing that happened into good. Prayer after prayer was answered! Even the prayer for my Grandma’s healing!

My Grandma has been at Alma Villa for about a week now and my dad said he has never seen her happier in her whole life! She seems like she’s 10 years younger. Everything she says makes sense and she’s incredibly positive. She no longer has any symptoms of Pix. She can’t stop smiling. I know this sounds unbelievable but I’m not exaggerating. I feel like I’m not doing this whole story justice. It’s like she has this new life. She’s so at peace now. She doesn’t suffer from panic attacks anymore and she has made it her mission to care for all the other elderly people she lives with. There’s a woman, Linda, who had a stroke and now wanders around (she just walks all day, she can’t sit). My Grandma befriended her and now Linda talks! She had not been able to talk before. 
When my Grandma was home she rarely got out except for Buko games at friends' houses and hair appts. Now that my Grandma is close we can see her more often and she can come to church with us.  Everything is just better. 

I had breakfast with my Grandma on Thurs and she told me that she thinks God has her there for a reason. I told her I totally agree and that she’s a light there. She really is. She just gleams. Because of her “new life” she has made up a nickname for herself. Her name is Janet and her new name is now Jancy. Haha. She’s hilarious. She has a really quick wit and she just says what’s on her mind. Her presence in our family has gone from this oppression that we had to constantly war against, to this presence of joy and laughter. The experience has strengthened my family even more. Thanks for reading if you got this far. I just wanted to share that when we cry out to God, He will answer. He heals. He renews. He makes beauty from ashes. He does the impossible. Prayers my parents have been praying for years have been answered in this last month. I have experienced James 1:2-7. I believe and I consider it pure joy!