Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren call her Mama Lou.
Folks at the skilled nursing facility at Warm Beach Senior Community know her as Elizabeth, the volunteer who answers telephones on Sunday afternoons.
They see a beautiful older woman: silver hair, cheerful smile, eyes the color of a Texas bluebell and soft voice laced with a drawl that comes natural to a native of the Lone Star state.
Laura Hofmann, a Warm Beach nurse who met a far different Elizabeth in 2005, calls her “our Christmas miracle.”
Miracle, indeed. Let’s start there.
Three years ago, Chuck Cook took his beloved Mama Lou from a nursing home in Las Vegas and flew her to Seattle. She could not speak nor swallow food and received nourishment through a stomach tube. She was weak, painfully thin, her right hand and arm useless.
He supported her as she struggled to walk into the nursing unit where Laura Hofmann is on staff.
Six months earlier, Elizabeth had begun to slur her words and had difficulty swallowing. Doctors diagnosed a stroke.
Up to that point, she worked at Albertson’s as a product demonstrator and lived a busy, contented life.
Treatment she received for her “stroke” did not seem to help. Cook made repeated trips from his home on Camano Island to Las Vegas to check on her.
Elizabeth’s condition worsened. Pneumonia attacked her frail body. Unable to speak, eat or swallow, she was placed on a ventilator and a stomach tube was inserted.
She managed to fight off the pneumonia, but there were few signs of recovery.
Frustrated, Cook searched for a care facility closer to his home where he could be with her more. He chose the skilled nursing unit at Warm Beach Senior Community.
After she reached Warm Beach, her rehabilitation plan was based on the stroke diagnosis. Still no progress. After a few weeks, Cook expressed his deep concern. Could there be something else wrong? The nursing staff had begun to question this as well.
Nurse Hofmann and one of her colleagues asked physicians if the symptoms might also indicate Myasthenia gravis.
This is a chronic autoimmune neuromuscular disease that causes muscle weakness in all areas of the body including muscles that control breathing and swallowing. There are medicines that can treat these symptoms. Some patients are able to return to most of their normal activities.
With the family’s consent, a blood test was taken and sent to a special laboratory for examination. Results were conclusive. Medication was prescribed immediately.
“I took that pill at 6 p.m., ” Elizabeth says. “At 6:45, I could speak.”
The staff, rejoicing that at last they had a true diagnosis and a path of treatment, called her their “Christmas miracle.”
Still, there was much work ahead. As her breathing and swallowing improved, the stomach tube was removed and she had to learn to eat real food all over again. At first, she says, nothing tasted good even when the kitchen prepared special favorites to tempt her. As she grew stronger, food began to taste better.
Medication was adjusted to meet her body’s needs.
Physical therapists helped her with exercises so she could regain the use of her arm and hand. She learned to print and then write, once more.
Late in January, she walked out of the skilled nursing unit at Warm Beach with her grandson and his family.
“When she left we had a big party,” Laura Hofmann recalls. “There were lots of tears. She really was our Christmas miracle.”
Even as she settled in to her new life on Camano, that “miracle” was never far from Elizabeth’s thoughts, either.
Determined to “give back” she worked briefly in the gift shop at Warm Beach and then offered to be one of the volunteers who answers telephones in the nursing unit on weekends.
At home, she crocheted delicate snowflakes and frosty gingerbread men that decorate Christmas trees in the nursing unit this holiday season.
“I just wanted to say thank you because they did so much for me. I know that I would not be alive today if had not been for them,” she says.
She holds no anger for months spent hospitalized in Las Vegas without an accurate diagnosis. Instead, she talks about how blessed she was to be cared for by the staff at Warm Beach and to be at home, now, with her family on Camano Island.
Now, as her 85th birthday approaches she says, “I feel like I need to grab hold of life and enjoy what I have and not look back.”
Want your own small miracle this holiday season?
Follow Mama Lou’s lead: Grab hold of the life you’ve been given, enjoy all its blessings and never look back.
Linda Bryant Smith writes about life as a senior citizen and the issues that concern, annoy and often irritate the heck out of her now that she lives in a world where nothing is ever truly fixed but her income. You can e-mail her at ljbryantsmith@yahoo.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
