By's Musings

Family

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Moving Right Along

For several years, my wife and I have known this day was coming. Ever since the explosion of the blood vessel in my head and the removal of the benign meningioma that had attached itself to the right frontal lobe of my brain, we knew that we needed to move back to Pennsylvania to be near our family. We wanted to see our grandkids growing up. We wanted to see our younger grandkids enjoy their school and church programs. We wanted to see our older granddaughter develop into the excellent student and athlete that as a ninth grader she is showing the promise of becoming.

Through the years there were times when our daughters needed our help and support. Now, it was our turn to need their help, support and comfort. Doing those things from a distance of 650 miles had become much more difficult for all of us. This illustrates one of the biggest shortcomings of a mobile society. It also highlights the sacrifice that military and missionary families are called to make in service to their country and their God. As my wife and I faced the projected difficulties and pleasures of the upcoming years, dealing with them from a distance of 15 to 20 miles was much more appealing to us.

Therefore, three years ago when it was apparent that I could not work full-time as a college professor or administrator, we put our house up for sale. The past three years have not been the best three years to try to sell a house. Our real estate agent kept urging us to be patient. He would say, “Your house is a gem, the right buyer is out there.” He would remind us, “The house is a three-story, Sears house, erected in 1922, in mint condition. It is a classic, a house with character. It is just waiting for the right person to come along and buy it.”

This past fall the right person came along and made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. This kicked our preparations for a move up a couple of gears. We hurriedly found a one-level, first floor apartment that has three bedrooms so that I can have an office, my wife can have her sewing room and we have room to entertain overnight guests. It met our other non-negotiable condition: it is within 20 miles of each of our daughters.

Having made four long distance moves previously, you would think that my wife and I would be seasoned professionals at the moving process and know what to do when. We should have been old hands at this process. However, that is precisely the problem: “We are old hands.” There is one more complication. This move is coming out of our pocket. The tab for the previous four were picked up by my new employer. This time we have to pay the entire bill ourselves, which is no small task for a couple on a retirement income, facing mounting medical expenses.

Now, all of a sudden M-Day is here. We will be moving in less than three weeks. This meant that instead of going along in fourth gear, we had to find the overdrive that we have not used in three years. Even in fourth gear, I have felt that I didn’t have time to maintain my blog as I would have liked. Looking ahead at the next two months, I know my blog is going to have to take a rear seat to the move. So, this is not farewell, it is just good-bye for awhile. I will see you on the other side of the move.

In the meantime, I leave you with this video clip of what the last two months have looked like and what the next two months will look like for us. It combines several of my favorite TV characters, Dr. Who and the Muppets:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo6QeBmXn18

 

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Never Take a Loved One for Granted

Within the past month, I learned several lessons from my 14-year old granddaughter. She shared with me an essay that she had written for her ninth-grade English class. The assignment was to write a memoir. I will admit that it brought tears to my eyes. Her essay showed the importance of family and the role that love and respect within a family should play. It emphasized the fact that the little things we do can make a big difference.

This may be the biased opinion of a grandfather who believes his granddaughter is one very special young lady, but I am convinced her essay exhibited a maturity far beyond what most of us exhibit, no matter what our age is. It also illustrated lessons that I have attempted to teach within the academy for 40 years that far too often have fallen on deaf ears.

With the permission of my granddaughter and her teacher (since it was an assignment), I take this opportunity to share the Memoir here at By’s Musings. I first present the essay and then will make some comments about it, speaking as a very proud grandfather.

Taken for Granted

               Most people think that nothing will happen to them or the ones they love. I learned the hard way that it can. It was back in 6th grade when I was eleven years old. I was a very outgoing person and I took my grandfather for granted, because I thought that he was always going to be around. He has always been a great grandfather and he was always the first person I would call when I would hit a homerun at softball or if I made a new team. I would only get to see him three or four times a year when my grandparents would come to Pennsylvania from Michigan. Though our visits were infrequent, we always had a great time when they came in.

I remember answering the phone and the person said that they were my grandmother’s pastor and that they were looking for my mom. I was so confused and had no idea what they were talking about. I walked into the kitchen and said “Mom, Grammy’s pasture [sic] is on the phone.” When I was eleven years old I did not know that a preacher was also called a pastor. My mom just stopped and looked at me like I was stupid and took the phone. I went upstairs to get in the shower, and when I came back down she was crying her eyes out. I asked her what was wrong, and the only thing she told me was that my grandfather was in the hospital. My mom called her sister, and she said that they think that he had a stroke. Right after she got off the phone she called my dad, and he came home right away. My mom wanted to go out to Michigan right away, but there were a couple of problems. PSSA testing had just started for me that day and we did not know how long we would be staying in MI. My mom and dad both had to work, we had nowhere to put my dog, and Michigan is over 13 hours away.

Missing work and school were the least of our problems. We decided that my dog would go to a friend’s house. We got everything packed up, dropped the dog off, and picked up my aunt. Then, the longest car ride to Butterworth Hospital out in Grand Rapids, Michigan began.

I remember walking in and I just started to cry. I walked over to his bed side and said, “Hey Pop-pop what’s up?” and I can remember his exact words “The sky.” At that point everyone started to laugh. My grandmother explained to us that he was in a meeting at work, after the meeting he put his head down on the table and one of his co-workers asked him if he was okay and he never answered. They immediately called 911, and when they got there they thought he had a bleeding stroke. We went to my grandparents’ home and one of my grandmother’s friends made us a casserole for dinner and left it on her door stoop.

The next day at the hospital they did a CAT scan and found out that he had a brain tumor the size of a racquet ball, and it caused some hemorrhaging. They wanted to do surgery immediately the next day. My grandfather had hair, but he was bald on top of his head. They shaved all of his hair off and he looked totally different. The day he had his surgery was the longest day ever. My family and I sat in the waiting room playing Apples to Apples, sleeping, and reading to past the time till my grandfather got out of surgery. We played Apples to Apples, because I had it in the car for from the long car ride.

When he finally came out of surgery and we could go back and see him, he had gauze wrapped around his head. He had staples in his head and when I saw him I almost got sick. We stayed for a couple more days, but we had to leave and get back home. I did not want to leave. I was afraid that he was not got going to pull through it.

My grandfather has never fully recovered from this whole incident. As a result of the surgery he has aphasia which is a condition that causes him to forget words that people take for granted in our everyday life. He cannot walk without a cane or for long periods of time. Since the whole incident he has also been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, which causes him to shake a lot. My grandfather before the brain tumor was a very self-sufficient person, but now he must rely on my grandmother to do most things for him. My grandfather was very upset after he found out that he is not allowed to drive any more or return to work.

This affected my family as well. When we got home every time the phone would ring we would be scared that something happened to him. It really affected my grandmother as well, because she cannot do everything by herself so they will move back to Pennsylvania in April of this year.  Anything can happen to the people that you love, so make sure that they know that you love them and never take them for granted.

.       The important lesson that we must all remember is the last sentence of her memoir. “Anything can happen to the people that you love, so make sure that they know that you love them and never take them for granted.”  I don’t think that she is being morbid in suggesting that whenever we see a loved one, it may be the last time we will see them. I believe that she is teaching us to make sure that we show our love to each other whenever we can, because we don’t know when that opportunity will be taken from us.

The lesson noted in the opening paragraphs of this posting I suggested fell on deaf ears in the academy is that everyone regardless of their age or status has something to offer. I believe that knowledge consists of content, skills and values. No one person has a monopoly on knowledge. If even one member of a class is prevented from offering their insights to the whole class concerning thoughts related to the subject of the class, everyone, including instructor and students, is short-changed. A complete education is facilitated by an open class in which everyone participates as both instructor and student. The role of the professor is not to serve as dictator, but to serve as a facilitator and guide.

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When and How to Tell the Grandkids

This past Thanksgiving my wife and I split a week between our two daughts and their families. One daughter has a daughter who is 13. The other daughter has 2 boys, aged 10 and 6, a daughter aged 4. Our daughters, who live over 500 miles away from us, are only 20 miles away from each other. Until two years ago, with my schedule in the academy, it was always easier for my wife and I to travel and visit them for the holidays. We would be there for both Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The year 2009 was the first break in that routine. Thanksgiving came eight months after my traumatic brain episode. I had been cleared to drive some, but not for long periods at a time. Since my wife does not like driving in snowy weather, we decided that the weather would be a better bet in November. So we told the kids that we would come for Thanksgiving. We then scheduled a number of required follow-up examines  for me in December and January. So we had our first experience of CHristmas in November.

It really turned out to be the right decision because on December 30, with my wife  driving me home from a doctor’s appointment, I had a grand mal seizures. I was unconscious, so she called 911 and the ambulance arrived very quickly. On the ride to the hospital, I never regained consciousness. In fact I had three more seizures in the ambulance before I got to the hospital.

Throughout 2010, I had to fight the effects of epilepsy, fatigue, auras and the uncertainty of what might  be next. As Thanksgiving and Christmas approached, my wife and I decided to travel over Thanksgiving and stay at home over Christmas.  Our daughters agreed completely with the decision. The grandkids especially the three younger ones were dissapointed.

Throughout the Thanksgiving visit ,it was obvious to everyone that something was different with Pop Pop. He was constantly fatigued. Noise, bright lights and commotions bothered him. He could not play the video games with the boys that he used to play with them for hours.

Our older granddaughter is a very smart young teenager. She went to church with us the Sunday  after Thanksgiving. My wife and I went to the church we went to when we lived in that area 15 years ago. We saw many old friends most of whom knew what had happened to me. Our granddaughter overheard several conversations where people were asking about particulars of my condition. In one of those conversations, the individuals said that it was a miracle that I was still alive and doing so well. I didn’t think about our granddaughter being right there, so I replied that I had four different doctors tell me that they had no medical explanation as to why I was still alive. I continued by saying that I told the doctors I understood what they were saying, but I knew why I was still alive.  Three of my doctors said tht they understood the role God played in medicine.

Later that day, our granddaughter asked her mother if Pop Pop had epilepsy. Out granddaughter had some idea of what that meant because her father’s sister has it, and one of her cousins had tried to explain it to our granddaughter when she asked him why her aunt didn’t drive anymore and why  he had to do all the driving. Our daughter told our granddaughter about my seizures. Later our granddaughter told our daughter what she had heard at the church. She also told our daughter that she knew why Pop Pop was still alive. “He is still alive, because he is so special.”

When my wife and I got home, in a conversation with our daughter who is the mother of the three kids, I asked her if they had asked any questions about why Pop Pop couldn’t play with them like he used to. She said that they hadn’t  asked any questions. The only thing the boys  said was that Pop Pop was tired all the time. The six-year  made a  comment that  “all old people with white hair get tired” 🙂 (that was his great wisdom!)

I have a question for those of you who have had more experience in dealing with epilepsy of grandparents who are not constantly in contact with young grandchildren. When,  how much and who should tell the grandchildren?

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Hello world!

Welcome to my site. THe following Grand Rapids Press article tells a little bit about my story. This story told the story to October 2009. On December 30, 2009, another adventure began. I had four grand mal seizures and was hospitalized again for a week. I am now classified as an epileptic with all the challenges of that disease. I hope the blog will help me speak about higher education the thing that I love the most besides God, my wife and the rest of my family. I hope to post an original essay each Monday and a commentary on a selected news item from the top Higher Education Newsletters.  For those who are wondering what’s up with the beta squared, since my initials are BB and I am a mathematician, I have been using beta squared for years as my initials. ?2

Former Cornerstone University provost develops aphasia after blood vessel bursts in brain

By Nardy Baeza Bickel | The Grand Rapids Pr…

November 21, 2009, 4:35AM

GRAND RAPIDS — For 40 years, Bayard “By” Baylis has worked with words to develop curriculum for students and to help faculty teach better, most recently as the provost at Cornerstone University.

But after undergoing brain surgery earlier this year, words have been a bit tricky for Baylis: They behave like cats, not dogs, the educator said.

Bayard BaylisCourtesy Photo of Former Cornerstone University provost Bayard Baylis, shown here with his wife, Elaine Baylis, had a blood vessel burst in a brain tumor and developed aphasia, a disorder that impairs language skills.“Dogs come when you want them, but cats … they come to you when they want to come to you, not when you call them,” said Baylis, trying to explain what it feels to live with mild aphasia, a communication disorder that limits a person’s usage and
understanding of language.

Learning how to pick through his brain to find the right words has not been easy for the 63-year-old, who until recently spent his days revamping Cornerstone’s curriculum and designing new strategies to improve student retention and enrollment at Christian institutions.

“He was a beloved provost because of his humble manner. Faculty and students could sense that he cared about them. He’s such a good listener,” said Alan Blanchard, who worked with Baylis in developing Cornerstone’s journalism program he directs.

“He really seems to genuinely care about people.”

Now, Baylis keeps a small notebook in his shirt pocket to make sure he will capture the ideas as they come to him. He also color-codes the ideas throughout his writings to make sure he does not leave any of them without proper explanation.

“That’s part of the insidiousness of the disease. There are times that I know I sound as if I’m making sense, but it’s not the sense I wanted to make. This week I’ve been (writing) an article about liberal arts and practical education, and I’m trying to understand the ancient Greek system. It’s just been a battle,” he said.

The experience has done nothing but strengthen his relationship with God, Baylis said.

“God is a god of miracles and not a god of convenience,” Baylis said. “The timing of the episode was a small miracle. If it had happened 15 minutes later, I would have been making 70 mph on I-96. And if it had happened a couple of months later, we would have been in Illinois, not knowing many people, not having doctors, not knowing the medical (community).”

“That in itself was a miracle,” agreed his wife, Elaine Baylis.

This spring, Baylis resigned as the second-in-command at Cornerstone to revamp the academic curriculum at Trinity International University in Deerfield, IL, where he was to become dean and vice president of academic affairs.

He was in a meeting with faculty and staff at Cornerstone when he got the worst headache he ever has had.

His speech became slurred, he broke out in a cold sweat, and his face became ash-white.

Baylis has no recollection of what happened later: Of his friends calling 911, fearing he had suffered a stroke; of the ambulance ride to the hospital and of doctors finding, and removing, a non-cancerous tumor in his brain.

His wife, 63, was told to gather the family. If he made it out of the operating room, doctors told her, he never would be the same.

When Baylis woke up after surgery, his speech was altered, but he couldn’t tell the difference.

“It was so frustrating. There was a word that described the condition I wanted to describe and I couldn’t come up with it. I would have trouble following directions, oral or written,” Baylis said.

After months of physical, occupational and speech therapy, Baylis said, he is doing much better. Now retired, he had to pass up the job at Trinity.

He can follow a conversation without much help and already passed a test to regain his driver’s license.

But he still is easily exhausted and, once in a while, words elude him, he said.

Just recently, while attending a funeral service for a Cornerstone employee, Baylis said he had trouble recalling names of former colleagues.

“I knew what they did. I knew what they taught. I knew where their offices were, but I couldn’t come up with their names,” he said.

Still, he pushes forward. Baylis and his wife hope to move soon to Pennsylvania to be close to his family. They still spend most of the mornings, and some afternoons, talking with colleagues about the future of academia and what colleges should do to better to educate students.

E-mail Nardy Bickel: nbickel@grpress.com