Believing in Miracles

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Sharing in Glory and Suffering

Denny and Diana Glusko's journey started last May when their car veered across a rural road in Fauquier County, slammed into a ditch and flipped. The impact paralyzed Diana from the neck down.

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It was a miracle, Denny and Diana are sure, although one that required arduous weeks of weaning from the ventilator. And in December, a surgeon at Washington Hospital Center wired her with an unusual pacemaker -- for her lungs. He sutured two electrodes to the nerve that should trigger her diaphragm to contract. Radio receivers were implanted below the skin; above were taped rings and wires connecting to a dual-dial black box, much like the remote-control unit of a model airplane. All to circumvent the damage done in that one split second last spring.

It is not a perfect miracle, to be sure. Diana says she often feels as if a straitjacket is squeezing her chest, a pressure-pain that can push her toward panic. Denny tries repositioning the pillows around and between her legs, straightening her listing shoulders, talking her down.

"Denny, you have no idea. No one has any idea," she chides him. Her response is rarely harsher, never poisoned by bitterness or blame. She says she forgave her husband in the first days after their crash and then accepted her circumstance. It was an accident, nothing more. "I don't think I ever said, 'Why me?' " she says. Not that she is free of regrets: "I wish I'd worn a seat belt."

Every two hours, Diana must be turned from side to side; the trace movements she has recovered in her hands and an upper leg are not up to the task themselves and may never be. "God bless you," Denny invariably tells whoever has helped him. "Thank you for caring for her."

Diana's primary hospital physician, Manisha Singal, worries about the immense challenges looming after she leaves the hospital. She also marvels, saying she has never seen such unconditional love and support between two people. She has watched it renew "a sense of possibilities" in the hospital staff. Nurses and others have joined in prayer in that room, and Denny has ministered to families and patients elsewhere on the floor. "He's become our local pastor," Singal says.

The final amen every night is Denny and Diana's alone -- after he has fed her the last half-dozen or so pills, smoothed her sheets, brushed her hair, spun shut the blinds. After they've kissed. He climbs into her wheelchair, parked close to the bed and reclined to its maximum angle. He reaches for the light, pulls his John 3:16 baseball cap over his eyes, and both wait for the blessing of sleep.

An Unfolding Future

Their modest home will never accommodate a quadriplegic, so Denny and Diana have been making plans. They will move in with their daughter, Tracy Lamb, and her family in Stafford. Tracy has two girls, and Diana practically raised the 8-year-old. What she misses most is holding Marie. "I used to love putting my arms around her," Diana says.

Tracy has continued to wrestle with questions in the past 10 months. "I don't understand why God would allow this to happen to her," she admits. Her parents' faith awes her. "They not only wore it easily when life was good but even when life turned on them."

Faith or not, since late February it had seemed that the insurance company had the upper hand. It balked over what it would pay toward the equipment Diana needs to stay safe outside the hospital, and the delay kept her in the hospital at a cost Denny doesn't want to calculate. He will face staggering bills on his own. Only in overwhelming fatigue does his voice edge toward despair.

"We will go home when the Lord sends us home," he tells himself.

Last week, the impasse finally ended when he negotiated a bed and mattress and a key piece of monitoring gear -- the very basics. That cleared the way for Diana to be discharged as soon as tomorrow. It won't be in time for this resurrection Sunday. But close enough, says Denny.

"All honor, glory and praise to the Lord."