Paralyzed

Yesterday Stephanie reminded me of this song by Sixpence None the Richer. It was perfect. Here's the story.

Last week I visited a man from our church in the hospital. He'd had some mini-strokes and was in the late stages of Alzheimers or dementia. Anyways he could no longer swallow and really couldn't communicate real well. He recognized me and tried to talk. He laughed some, smiled some, said a few things I understood and a bunch I didn't. I don't know how much of that was because of his brain and how much was that his throat and tongue weren't working right. His mouth was so dry that his tongue was scaly. His family talked right in front of him like he couldn't understand. I'm pretty sure he could. They were talking about how they were going to remove the feeding mechanisms. I'm not sure where I stand on the whole situation and I'm not writing to discuss that. Please if I'm ever in this situation do not discuss it in front of me. He had written out ahead of time that he didn't want a feeding tube or any of that stuff. But as they removed the bag of food I found myself in this situation. "I breathed in, I breathed out, Soaked the ground up with my eyes. It's hard to say a healing word When your tongue is paralyzed".