A New Adventure

“But behold, I shall take these plates, which contain these prophesyings and revelations, and put them with the remainder of my record, for they are choice unto me; and I know they will be choice unto my brethren.
“And I do this for a wise purpose; for thus it whispereth me, according to the workings of the Spirit of the Lord which is in me. And now, I do not know all things; but the Lord knoweth all things which are to come; wherefore, he worketh in me to do according to his will.”
Words of Mormon 6-7

Sometimes our lives take such dramatic and different turns that it is unimaginable. That is what our life has done this past year. Last year at this time Ed and I were looking forward to going on our first cruise. Although Ed’s life wasn’t the best, we were both working and doing well. A year later Ed’s health is in the trash, neither of us is working, he is on a lung transplant list, and we are living in an apartment in Los Angeles waiting for it.

Last fall, a new show began on TV call “Flash Forward.” Its premise was that at a certain moment all over the world everyone collapsed, became unconscious and saw six minutes of their life six months in the future. For most it was a continuation of their normal life (and for those the show didn’t concern themselves), but for many, their glimpse of the future showed their life so different that they couldn’t imagine how it could come to pass. Sometimes how they thought it would happen was diametrically opposed to what would happen; in one case a racially diverse couple were contemplating marriage, but his parents were very opposed. The man had no flash forward, which he took to mean he would be dead six months later, but she saw herself in Hawaii with flowers and a beautiful gown walking towards what looked like a wedding scene, and his and her parents and many friends there. She insisted she was walking towards him as they were getting married. Finally after several months, etc., she realized that his parents would never attend his wedding, but everyone would attend a special memorial service for him.

Last fall when Ed was recovering from pneumonia and a bad bacterial infection and was at his worst, when the doctors kept saying there was nothing they could do for him, when physical therapy had not helped after three months and he had lost so much weight, and had to stop to rest three times just walking from the car to the house, I really began to afraid to envision our life six months in the future for fear what I would see. I tried several times a week to get him to go to Dick’s Market or Costco with me for 30 or 45 minutes to walk around, and even that was difficult with him holding on to the grocery cart which held his portable oxygen concentrator.

Then Ed’s lung specialist recommended a lung transplant, and began the process. At the same time, Ed’s health began to improve slowly. By the time we went to Los Angeles for the primary evaluation in early December, Ed was doing so much better I couldn’t believe it. By the time we moved to L. A. The beginning of January, Ed was even better. The pulmonary therapy program at the U. gave him a rave rating on his improvement on the last month, he had gained ten pounds, and he can walk quite a bit with his oxygen.

If I could have seen six minutes of my life now in L. A. a year or even six months ago, would I have believed it? Could I even have imagined it? I had never thought I’d ever live anywhere but my home in Centerville, yet here we are in a studio apartment a few miles from the Santa Monica beach and one mile from the temple. Why are we here? For a lung transplant of course, but the VA in Salt Lake does those for veterans, which Ed surely is, and the U. of U. routinely does them also. However, they don’t want to do a lung transplant on Ed because he’s over 65. And we’re at Cedar Sinai Hospital because Ed’s lung specialist trained here and knew who to recommend him to. There are many other hospitals he could have gone to—why here?