Hope Heals: A True Story of Overwhelming Loss and an Overcoming Love by Katherine Wolf & Katherine Wolf & Jay Wolf & Jay Wolf

Author:Katherine Wolf & Katherine Wolf & Jay Wolf & Jay Wolf [Wolf, Katherine]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2016-04-26T04:00:00+00:00

The summer night fell on Casa Colina with a soft dampness, like a warm towel not quite finished drying. The sounds of life settling down for sleep were certainly different than the ones you might hear in LA’s city limits. Crickets sang and cicadas buzzed as I walked the hundred yards from our new rental home to the Transitional Living Center, “the TLC,” where Katherine would do therapy during the day and stay the night from now on.

It had been a big day leaving UCLA and getting settled at Casa Colina, the third new microworld we had entered since the stroke. The folks who ran things seemed very professional and nice enough. I could only imagine their stress in working day in and day out with patients who were all living some variation of the worst nightmare of their lives. Everyone deemed suitable for this program had suffered some sort of neurological trauma, and while their deficits varied greatly, one common thread tied them together: They all stood on the precipice of despair, and this place was their last chance for hope.

Katherine would begin a whole new intensive level of therapy the next day, about which we were enthusiastic but nervous, but I had not anticipated a change that would be the hardest of all, for me at least. I would no longer be able to spend the night in Katherine’s room. In the ICU, she had her own nurse 24/7, waiting and watching. In acute rehab, we had cobbled together that same 24/7 schedule with friends and family, which included someone spending the night in her room every night. This was mostly done so Katherine would know she was not alone. Now there would be no night watch, no one she could call for help if she needed something right away, no one to comfort her if she awoke from the nightmares that constantly plagued her.

I felt like a parent sending my baby off to camp for the first time—stomach-churning anticipation of new growth mixed with the sickening reality that she was effectively on her own now. The one comfort was that Katherine had been reunited with her cell phone. Despite her severe double vision and lack of her once-dominant right hand, she had relearned how to use her phone with her left hand for emergency purposes. It was her connection to the world. It would help communicate for her better than she could for herself, but it was still a poor substitute for a human companion.

I waved as I walked past the nurses’ station and down the short hall that led to her new room. One of the main reasons I could not stay the night was that Katherine would now have a roommate. Charlotte was in her sixties, a petite, feisty-looking woman with short, cropped hair and glasses. At first glance, she could have been a teacher or someone’s grandmother, but upon further observation, she fit neither of those descriptions. She walked around well enough, though slowly, limping due to the paralysis emanating from her left leg to the left arm that hung by her side.

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