Lisa had encephalitis? When?

OK...so I shouldn't post prayer requests that refer to former illnesses that happened before this century. Was 1995 really that long ago?

Let's see....in May of 1995, Caleb was 11, Betsy was 9, Jenni was 8 and Andie (my neice) still lived with us and she was 3 years old. I remember coming home from work after a particularly difficult meeting. I had shed tears, that under normal circumstances I would not have let fall. By 5:30, I had picked the kids up from daycare and I was dead tired. I let Caleb cook dinner and I went to bed (also, definitely not a normal occurance - to go to bed at 6:00 pm or to let Caleb cook). Kenn came home from work the next morning and by that time I went from being tired to having double pneumonia and unable to walk from one end of the house to the other. I spent the day at the doctor's office and lab getting blood work and x-rays taken. All I really wanted to do was sleep. I remember that Andie was freaked out about me being sick. The last time her mom was "sick" a policeman took her to foster care and took her mom away. She was sure I was going to disappear.

I did not get better with antibiotics. Kenn didn't go back to work for 3 weeks to care for me. I eventually went back to work part-time, but could not shake the fever and could not get my strength back. By July, I had frustrated my family doctor and was referred to an infectious disease doctor who started testing for auto immune diseases. He assured me that I would either get better and not care if I was ever diagnosed, or I would get worse and they would figure it out. Somehow that was supposed to make me feel better. At some point over the summer, I became aware of how difficult it was to cook from memory. I would leave ingredients out of recipes or forget to cook a vegetable or starch that usually went with a meal. I realized, I could no longer ever win at solitaire on the computer. I voiced my complaints to the the infectious disease doc and got sent to a neurologist.

The neurologist ordered an MRI. They told me it would take 10 minutes to take a peak at my brain. I knew when I was still there 45 minutes later they were looking at something interesting, at least to them. There is nothing quite like being in a small tube with the sound pounding so loud you can't think or sing or hardly even pray. They found recent scars deep in my brain in the area that "labels the filing cabinets of your memory" (your memories are there you just can't remember where you put them) and near my hypothalmus that controls temperature regulation. The neurologist's best guess was that I can contracted encephalitis, an infection in the brain itself that left the scars. It was unusual to see deep tissue damage without brain stem damage. It was like the infection went so far and then without any reason just stopped (could it be that people were praying and God said, "OK stop right there"?). He hadn't ever seen a case with this kind of damage that didn't impact the brain stem too, so there was no way to know what the long term affect might be. He said that most brain injuries heal over a 5 year period. My best plan would be to eat well, take vitamins and exercise to maximize the healing. Whatever didn't heal, I could learn to live with and be grateful I wasn't in some sort of vegetative state from a brain stem injury.

They repeated the MRI again 90 days later to make sure there were no new scars and there were not, so I was released from the neurologist, and the infectious disease doctor. There was no way to know if the pneumonia was the primary infection and my lowered immune system caught the encephalitis or if the encephalitis came first and caused the pneumonia. Usually at this point in the story, I blame Kenn because his sister contracted viral meningitis within a week of when I got sick and he was around us both. He claims this is impossible, but it makes sense to me. Paramedics are exposed to all kinds of sick people.

So what's it like now? The fevers reoccur when I am stressed or if I am exposed to some sort of virus. The good news is that I rarely catch anything that lasts because the fever wipes it out quickly before it takes hold. My short term memory remains a problem although it is much improved from the early days. I have to intentionally create long term memories with repetition or emotion or something to make it stick. I generally park my car in the same row at work or at the store so that I can remember where I parked. I hang my keys in the same place so I know where they are. I create a logical place to put things so that if I can't remember what I did, I can at least reason through, what I should have done. This is a source of endless humor in my home because my family knows I don't really know. It keeps me humble and it keeps us all laughing.

I originally thought this was the end of my academic career. However, in 2002 I discovered that adult degree completion programs don't require test taking. I went back to school at APU and finished my undergraduate degree in 2004 after a 25 year plus break. In the fall of 2005, I enrolled in a Greek language class at St. Paul's Orthodox Church in Irvine. The pace is pretty slow and Nina also doesn't give tests to her adult classes. This too has been a positive experience. It takes me a little longer to remember, but I am remembering. Nina teaches out of the same textbook that the staff in Greece use to learn language. If I can build a base of learning here, I will be that much farther ahead when I get there.

So....I think I may well have flunked my first quiz at least since high school and maybe ever today. There is a first time for everything. Thanks for praying for God to help me remember what I need to know for this Second Language Acquisition class. This is going to be an interesting 2 weeks.

Missionary Training: SLA

We are starting a new module today at Missionary Training on “SLA” (second language acquisition). Our next two weeks will be spent learning the written language used internationally for phonetics as well as learning how to plan sessions with a language tutor. It seems very practical and valuable. Our teachers are highly qualified and excellent at what they do. The language tutors, however, are Korean and speak very little English. We as a small group of 4 will spend 8 hours with a tutor and prepare a short skit in Korean demonstrating our ability to navigate a common situation of our choosing. During the last session we will present the skit where we will each have a speaking part (in Korean). Kenn and I are in different groups. We are also using this experience to develop a language learning plan that is specific to our initial needs as we go to Greece.

My concern heading into the 2 weeks relates more to the phonetics portion than the practical piece. The language sounds cover every conceivable noise used in international language. We are learning how to speak it, write it and describe where in the mouth, lips or voice box that it is created.

Want to try? Take the tip of your tongue and place the bottom side of your tongue on the roof of your mouth. Now try to make a “ch” sound. You have just made a retro-flexed, affricate, voiceless, aspirated, “t”- wedge-“s”-sound. Are you having fun yet? I have developed a great respect for each one who works as a linguist and/or translator for SIL (Wycliffe).

Kenn is having a hard time hearing and producing the sounds. I am struggling with remembering from one minute to the next what I have learned. My short term memory loss from when I had encephalitis isn’t obvious in most situations because I have developed coping mechanisms that hide it fairly well, but it is going to be a challenge as I go cross culturally and a challenge to do well in this class. I believe we are required to complete this class, although no one has said yet that we have to have a passing grade, but we have higher expectations for ourselves and see the practicality of what we are learning. Our prayer would be that the Holy Spirit would enable us to learn what we need to know and that we would not become discouraged in the process. There is some sort of tipping point between having fun and laughing at yourself, and wondering whether you have what it takes. I’d like to finish looking back and thinking that this was fun (and wanting to repeat it in Greece some day soon without dreading it).

Thanks for praying. It really does make a difference.