Within a week, late in 2007, I encountered three persons who were facing debilitating health problems due to no fault of their own. Remarkably, astonishingly, they showed a positive acceptance of their conditions, had endured enormous pain and suffering, and were making the best of their handicaps. After talking with each of them, I wanted to slap myself for ever complaining about anything!

Their stories are so compelling that I had to write about them, and some have graciously consented to their publication, not that they are soliciting sympathy, but by sharing, they may be an encouragement to others in like or similar situations and to alert the medical community that may result in better treatment for their conditions.

Last week our subject was John C. Campbell Jr.; this week, Grace Hays.

Jonie Grace Slusher, while a senior in high school, married Clarence Hays, who had embarked on a career in the US Air Force. To this union three children were born and the Hays couple recently celebrated their Golden Anniversary.

Her health problems began about a year after she was married as she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, but she learned to live with this painful malady although subsequently she had to have artificial knuckles inserted due to the crippling effects from this disease.

She writes: “In the early seventies, I had to have an L-total hip replacement, which worked well for several years. When I had just about worn this joint out from taking care of our family as well as a heavy involvement in church and volunteer school work, I was told that I needed a total hip revision. This accomplished, I went about my duties as usual. Then I began to have pain in the area of the revised hip.

What I did not know and what my doctor did not tell me was I had a bone infection! They let this continue for a long time until the bone grew so weak that it broke away from the artificial mechanism in the hip. By the time I was taken to emergency in 1987, I was almost dead. From the hip joint on down the leg was a mass of infection. The only course of action was to amputate the entire leg.” Grace was fitted with an artificial leg and was walking with the aid of a cane six months later, although attending physicians had given her only a 5% chance of walking again due to the many complications which she had experienced. She was able to walk for 12 years until 1999.

But her problems mounted when she was hospitalized and unconscious from a lung problem and nurses broke her other leg, a precursor of worse things to come. She writes, “In the year 2000, the most challenging of my physical problems began: my battle with nerve pain. The whole mid-section of my body is a mass of pain!”

Pain that is constant! Pain that is most excruciating during her daily bed bath as the nerve endings become more highly sensitized due to the application of water! Pain that is only slightly mollified by high powered medicine! Due to the severity of this nerve pain and its effect on her remaining leg, she had to have it amputated below the knee in 2004. Clarence has taken her to many physicians in the Louisville area and has gone with Grace seven times to the Cleveland Clinic but with no significant success. The last time they visited the Clinic, her physician told them that in all of his years of practice he had never encountered a nerve problem of this magnitude and with this much pain. Clarence has developed a device that allows for a blanket to cover her but which does not touch the skin. Grace has begged him to put her in a nursing home, but he has steadfastly refused, saying that as long as he is able, he will take care of her at home. He seldom leaves her alone for more than a couple of hours. Tragic illness! Relentless pain! Prospects dim for recovery or even improve-ment! Jonie Grace is a modern day Job who must have questioned time and again, “Why?” Why do bad things happen to good persons, persons who have lived upright lives, persons of faith and character? But her story does not end there or perhaps more accurately, it begins with her suffering!

For whenever I have made a call to her residence, this cheery voice who sounds like a secretary for The Chamber of Commerce, responds and engages the caller in conversation as long as the caller’s time allows. Not a muffled, drug-laden voice but one that is bright and articulate, bent on providing information desired. A caller discovers that she is interested in history, reads voraciously, is keenly aware of current events and researches her family tree on the Internet. She will talk of her problems, but not morbidly so. In her own words she says: “Life is still wonderful! It is great to have a loving family, church and friends. We change what we can and accept what we cannot change and live life to the fullest as God would have us do. God is good no matter what our limitations. You can’t dwell on what you don’t have - it’s what you do have that counts!” Another person who has stared down the Devil! Who has looked catastrophic illness square in the eye and has not blinked! Who has thrown mud balls at death from her foxhole! How long can her heart hold out as she daily battles the world, the flesh, and the Devil? Some of us may never know!