During this time they got word that, her sister had gotten throat cancer. That did not help their morale any.
Gayle had regular visits to her neurologist and he prescribed various medications. Between him and her MD, she was taking some twelve to fifteen prescriptions per day. She had some good days and tried then to do housework and cooking, but when she did, she would end up in bed for three days. Her father told her not to try to do so much when she felt that way, but she wanted to and kept trying. She was up working in the kitchen one day, when her father noticed her staggering. He ran to her just as she collapsed and eased her to the floor, where she went into another seizure. She was out for about fifteen minutes before coming around. It was getting worse.
Chapter 8
Gayle was worn out after her seizure in the kitchen and went to bed. She told her dad that it was good that he had noticed the time span of the episode because she wanted the Doctor to know. The longer she was out the more danger of brain damage. She went to sleep and her father tried to calm down and relax, but there came a loud crash from Gayle's bedroom. He rushed in and found her on the floor having another seizure. This was the fourth one that he knew about and it lasted about twenty minutes for her to recover.
Gayle's neurologist was a native of India and went there for a vacation. He suffered a stroke while there and Gayle never found out if he survived or not. He did not come back to his practice. She was sad because she liked him very much and he was the only one besides her Doctor who understood MS.
Money was running out. Bills were getting delinquent and father was a nervous wreck, unable to sleep good, wondering what was happening in Gayle's bedroom. Then one night he heard screams. Gayle was hallucinating. She saw a crowd of people staring at her through the window and horrible creatures approaching her bed. Her father invoked the name of Jesus to get rid of them and told Gayle it was the Devil trying to destroy her. He commanded them to leave and later when Gayle recovered her senses she told him that he had done just the right thing and she knew it even when she was out of control.
Her dad stayed up the rest of the night to watch her. There was no way he could sleep.
Gayle, being a nurse, looked up in her medical book all her meds and sure enough found one of them had as the first side effect- seizures. She was convinced this prescription was the cause. Her Doctor agreed and changed it to a different kind.
All savings and investments were gone and her dad sold his coin collection of over thirty years on EBay, along with other items. Now with no income except for her father's social security, way behind on bills and no money for medicines, Gayle was forced to apply for Medicaid and food stamps for her and her father. It was approved and she got fourteen hundred dollars a month. There was a catch however. They took one thousand dollars out for her Avonex but did pay for the rest of her medications. The four hundred left helped but was not like the four thousand she had been making. They just barely got by, and the bill collectors started calling. Gayle had caller ID so was able to avoid them. There was nothing she could tell them except that she could not pay. They could not declare bankruptcy because a lawyer told them they would lose their home if they did. They were between the old rock and hard place.
Gayle's father's nerves were shot. He could not sleep worrying about Gayle and the finances. He had to take sleeping pills to get any rest at all and then hated to go to sleep because he worried about what might happen with Gayle while he was asleep. He did not like to go downtown to the store, but had to and prayed all the way home that everything would be all right when he got there.
One morning he got up and checked on Gayle. She was in bed but her left ankle was swollen and bruised. He told her that it looked broken to him. She said she did not think it was as she could move her toes and that it was a bad sprain. He still thought it was broken. She did not know how it happened and her father had heard nothing during the night. They figured that she had another seizure and got her foot caught under the bed during it. She did not want to go to the ER and her father could not convince her to go.
