Month: May 2014

Beauty from Ashes: Part 3

 

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The last two days, we have been learning the story of Barb Farrington and her daughter Katie following Katie’s accident in 1998. Today is the third and final installment of their inspiring story. In this post, Barb also shares some important words for new caregivers and shares a tender, personal story of forgiveness.

A New Season

In a short time, Barb’s and Katie’s lives had radically changed. Barb had given up a job she loved, lost her husband, and lost the daughter she once knew. Now she had to bond with the new person who was her daughter now. It took some time to work through that.

There was more, too, with which she needed to come to terms. “In order for our home to be really healthy and happy, we need to believe in a bigger picture.”

She made the decision to fight for her joy. That decision was the beginning of the journey back from despair. “I found myself again. In caregiving, you live someone else’s life so much. So much went into her, I didn’t know who I was. I was a walking, talking body. As I began to remember that I was a person, too, things began to come full circle.”

What’s important to her today?

“My faith, my family, going to River City Church, my friends. I don’t know what I would do without my friends and my sisters who give phone support. Friends are God’s angels to Katie and me.”

“I can truly say that God is good. There was a while that it was hard to get that out: God is good. I can truly say that I’m content. Katie’s happy. She was mad at God for a while. She didn’t really want to pray or anything. But she’s come full circle, too.”

Barb says she feels they are entering a new season. “I can’t put it into words. It’s a new feeling that I have for Katie. Overwhelming tenderness comes as close as I can to describing it. I’ve been tender with her, but it’s just different. I feel the need to spend more quality time with her, to connect on an even deeper level.”

“I need her. She’s always been important in my life, but I really feel I need that interaction.”

Never Give up Hope.

Barb has some important words for someone just beginning the caregiving journey:

  • There is always hope. Always hope. Never, ever, give up hope. I strongly believe in Jeremiah 29:11: ‘I know the plans I have for you…’
  • Make sure that you take time for yourself.
  • Don’t lose who you are, because it’s really easy to do. The person you’re caring for needs you, and they need you whole and healthy.
  • Don’t be afraid to share all your thoughts with God. Keep going to God, because He will meet with you. Even if you’re mad at Him, He’ll meet with you. I was more disappointed than mad. It was one disappointment after another. Then it seems like you’re not worthy to expect anything but disappointment.
  • Be around people who will encourage you.
  • Find something to laugh about every day. You have to have some  humor.

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A Life Worth Living: A Story of Forgiveness

One of the hardest things for Barb was to forgive the young man who was driving the night Katie was injured. She hated him with a passion. After the accident, police told Barb he never once asked how Katie was doing.

This young man’s family was well-known in the area, and lies began to circulate about the night of the accident. One lie was that Katie was driving that night.

The state took the young man to court. He was sentenced to eighteen months of boot camp. Barb had refused to see or speak to either him or his parents until that day in court. As far as she was  concerned, he was spoiled and already an alcoholic at the age of eighteen. She’d heard that he had a past record of bad behavior without suffering the consequences of his actions. This fed her anger.

It was in the courtroom that God broke through Barb’s bitterness. When she saw him sitting there in his jail uniform, she thought, “He’s just a boy.” It was then that her heart began to change toward him.

One Christmas after they moved to Lewiston, the phone rang. It was the young man’s mother, Cindy. She told Barb, “I needed to call you. I was out shopping today, and I saw a woman with her daughter. They were having such a good time together, and I thought of you and Katie. You will never be able to do that. I’m so sorry.”

Barb told her, “That’s all I ever wanted. Just to hear you say, ‘I’m sorry.’ That’s all I ever wanted.”

Barb forgave Cindy, and they developed a friendship. Cindy went around to the schools in the area and gave talks about the horrors of drunk driving.

Cindy asked Barb if their family could come see Katie sometime. Barb agreed, and her dad came over to be with Barb to lend her moral support when the day arrived. When their family walked through the door, Barb’s dad broke down and cried. He told them, “My girl’s just been hurt so terribly.” It was a time of tears and forgiveness.

The young man asked Barb, “What should I do to help you, to try to make things right?” That was when Barb discovered that he had found God. Barb told him, “The best thing you can do is marry your girlfriend, know Jesus as your personal Savior, be active in a church, and be a good citizen. That’s how you can make this better for us. I want you to go on and have a good life and do all the things that a person should do to make a life worth living. If you do that, then you’ve helped us.”

Not long after that, Barb helped him get his record expunged. For her, the reason was simple. She thought about what Jesus did on the cross for humanity. Jesus forgave her sins and wiped her slate clean. She now had the power to do that for someone else.

It was a cleansing act for Barb, bringing beauty out of the ashes of their lives.

Photos courtesy Grace Thorson

Beauty from Ashes: Part 2

 

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Yesterday, Barb Farrington shared the terrible accident that left her daughter Katie fighting for her life. Today, in Part 2, Barb describes the next steps in their journey.

From Hospital to Home

Katie was at St. Alphonsus Hospital for about a month, where she began to come out of her coma. She was moved to Elks Rehab in Boise, Idaho, where she was weaned off the ventilator. It was around this time that Barb began to notice encouraging signs of awareness in Katie. A friend of Katie’s gave her a little dog. When they put it in Katie’s hands, she would look at it. On a trip out of the hospital, Barb saw Katie watching the trees go by the van window.

But she couldn’t get the medical staff at the rehab hospital to give any credence to these small but significant changes. One day they announced to Barb that they had done all they could and that they were going to release her. They planned to discharge her on a Friday, leaving Barb and Ron scrambling to find a place for her.

They fought for a few extra days at the hospital, while Barb looked for another hospital for Katie. Ron began to get his house ready for Katie’s inevitable discharge home. The hospital in Burns, Oregon, which was near Barb’s home, graciously consented to take Katie until Ron’s home could be readied to accommodate their daughter.

“This girl’s trying to work with me.”

Finally, a doctor noticed her new awareness. He told Barb, “This girl’s trying to work with me. I know a doctor she needs to see: Dr. Josie Fitzsimons.” Dr. Fitzsimons became a good support for the family. She had them move Katie to Bend, Oregon, so they could work with her every day.

But Barb could only be there on weekends, because of her job as a K-3 library tech at the Burns school. When she did go to see Katie, Katie would turn her head away from her and toward the wall. Barb knew Katie was terribly unhappy. “I knew I had to do something different.”

When Ron’s house was ready, Katie was discharged home. Ron and Barb took turns caring for her. Finding respite care was hard. Barb’s marriage began to crumble.

“Oh, Katie, what have you done?”

When did Barb truly realize that Katie was still there, locked inside her body?

“I always knew that. Here’s one instance: When she was at the Burns hospital, my sister and I were dressing her one day. We knew she was tracking things, and hearing things, but we weren’t seeing facial responses. My sister got after me and said, ‘You’re just too rough when you’re dressing her. You need to be gentler.’ Katie laughed, because we got to arguing about it. It was her first laugh.”

“That did it for me. From then on, she started expressing emotion.” One day while Katie was living at Ron’s, Barb gave in to the exhaustion. She broke down into tears and said, “Oh, Katie, oh, Katie, what have you done?”

At that moment, Katie cried. Barb felt really terrible. She’s never mentioned it again in Katie’s presence.

Still, Barb grieved over the changes happening in Katie’s body. Before her accident, she had been a fairly athletic girl. It hurt Barb to watch Katie’s legs atrophy. “A piece of me was dying. Someone has said that when a woman chooses to have a child, that child is her heart walking outside her body forever. It’s so true.”

Greater love has no man than this…

“It was the first time in my life when things didn’t work out right away. I could not believe it. It was the nightmare that you wished you could wake up from.” Barb’s mother came to stay with her and told her, “You cry at night in your sleep.”

Katie’s world had become hers. “And there,” she says, “I think I made a mistake.” Her marriage to Rex dissolved–not surprising, since statistics reveal that few marriages survive the stress of dealing with a child’s disability.

Throughout 1998 and into 1999, they tried taking Katie to various rehab hospitals in a futile effort to help her improve. In 1999, Barb and Katie resettled in Lewiston, Idaho, to be nearer to her family. Of her decision to care full time for Katie, Barb says, “I couldn’t bear to be away from her. God spoke so softly to my heart this Scripture: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life….’ (John 15:13 KJV) And I just knew.”

Barb now operates a certified family home through the state of Idaho’s Medicaid program. She also cares for another client, Ted, who is protective of Katie. The state pays for fifty-six hours of nursing care a week to help Barb with Katie’s extensive caregiving needs. Barb calls it a “miracle provision.” Ron comes down every other weekend to help. Katie adores her dad, and they love to watch golf together.

Barb feels that God prepared her long in advance for this new job of caregiving. Before she was a library tech, she worked in special education for eight years. “Talk about God preparing me for what was ahead,” she says with a smile.

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Today, at age thirty-four, Katie very much understands humor and sadness. She knows her grandma has passed away. She has favorite people. She shows disapproval by wrinkling her nose and frowning, or yelling. She appears to understand some of the subtleties of relationships and displays jealousy.

She likes giving gifts. She loves to help choose them and watch the recipients’ reactions as they open them. It really pleases her if they like it.

Katie communicates by blinking once for yes and twice for no. Sometime she blinks three times. The doctor says she is messing with them.

Tomorrow, Part 3: A New Season and A Story of Forgiveness

Photos courtesy Grace Thorson

 

Beauty from Ashes: A Story of Provision and Forgiveness with Barb Farrington and Katie Tweit

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Today I have the honor of introducing a very special family to you: Barb Farrington and her daughter Katie Tweit. Katie suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident in 1998. Barb is Katie’s primary caregiver and cares for her in their home in northern Idaho. In this three-part series, Barb shares her very personal story of heartache, restoration, and forgiveness.

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The Accident: Angel on Her Shoulder

It was April 8, 1998. Barb and her husband of one year, Rex, were having a branding on the Oregon ranch. Barb tried to get her eighteen-year-old daughter Katie to come up to help with the cooking for the event. Katie’s roommate, Frances, was coming up to ride and rope cattle.

Katie had just landed a new job at a local farm supply company and was going to school at Treasure Valley Community College in Ontario. Oregon. She decided to stay and work at her new job.

The call for Barb came around 9:00 p.m. It was her ex-husband Ron, Katie’s dad. He told her that Katie had been in a serious car accident. She was being life-flighted to St. Alphonsus Hospital in Boise, Idaho, because they had an advanced trauma center.

Barb knew that meant it was bad. She had been told that no bones were broken, which could only mean that Katie had suffered a head injury. She tried to get more information from the hospital, but no one would give her much information over the phone. They didn’t sound encouraging, though.

It was an awful two-hour drive to the hospital.

When Barb, Rex, and Ron arrived at the hospital, they learned more about what had happened. Katie was the passenger in a car driven by a young man who had been drinking. He was driving 110 miles an hour when he lost control of the care. He had been thrown clear. Katie had not.

The doctors had argued about whether they should try to save her.

The accident was terrible. Barb was told that when emergency personnel arrived on the scene, Katie had “death rattles.” She wouldn’t have lived much longer. Barb also discovered that before she arrived at the hospital, the doctors had argued about whether or not to save her. One doctor was adamant that they shouldn’t try.

The medical team had made the decision together to make the attempt. One of the nurses on the trauma team came to visit Barb later. She told her that as they debated Katie’s care, she felt that there was an angel on Katie’s shoulder, protecting her. The nurse just couldn’t push for a decision to let her go.

Barb and Ron were never given an opportunity to decide whether or not to fight for Katie to live. That decision was made before they arrived at the hospital.

The first time Barb walked into Katie’s room, Katie was unrecognizable. Her face was swollen; they’s had to shave part of her hair off to put a pressure monitor into her head to keep an eye on the the swelling in her brain. They weren’t allowed to touch her or talk to her, because any kind of stimulation would be detrimental to her at this point. She wasn’t breathing on her own and needed a ventilator.

No Hope

Katie’s family was given no encouragement about Katie’s prognosis. “It was such a hard time,” Barb says, “We were given absolutely no hope. Nothing.”

One doctor did say that the worst case scenario was that she would never be better than she was at the moment. The best case scenario was that she might walk or talk again. There were no guarantees.

Katie didn’t look good, either. She didn’t respond to others and appeared to be asleep. Her family was told that the first three or four days would be crucial. Most of Barb’s family were in Mexico to attend her nephew’s wedding, held, ironically, on the same day as Katie’s accident. It was difficult to contact them with the news. But Barb was soon joined by her sister, son Andrew with his wife Angie, and daughter Heather.

At the hospital, Barb saw people come in and be released. She saw others that came in and didn’t make it. It was her sobering reminder that God is not a respecter of persons. “You just never know how your situation is going to turn out.” Barb could only wait and pray.

 

Photo of Barb and Katie courtesy Grace Thorson

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