Sherry Meyer - death in the middle of life

Death is a normal part of life, right? We all know that generally speaking, we get old and then we die. But sometimes death comes much sooner. It steals life away when a marriage is vibrant. It robs young children of a parent. It cheats friends and family of a beloved companion.

Jeff and Sherry Pearce July 4, 2007

Sherry Meyer, who is our Director of Resource Management and Development, can tell you about how death can come all too soon. She knows the story well. Life was totally normal in early 2007. She and her husband, Jeff Pearce, lived active, busy lives. They were parents of two children, Alexis, 8, and Zachary, 4. Sherry and Jeff would celebrate their 12^th wedding anniversary in July. There was no question, in early 2007, that birthdays and anniversaries would continue to occur.

Sherry and Jeff met in 1993 through mutual friends. She was almost 27; he was almost 30. They started dating, and eventually married in 1995. Jeff had always been athletic, and had played a variety of sports when he was young. That year, in 2007, he started having unexplained headaches. No big deal really. But eventually the headaches bothered him enough that he went to a neurologist, who prescribed a stronger pain medication to help.

That spring, Jeff was playing a basketball game with friends, when he collided with someone and went down. He landed a little funny, Sherry said, and started limping. Again, no big deal. But the limping continued longer than it should have, so he went to a doctor, got X-rays which showed nothing, and started physical therapy. “It was kind of helping,” Sherry said. “But then, he was going for a bike ride and couldn’t get his leg up over the bike bar. That was kind of strange.”

Soon, Jeff’s foot started dropping as he walked. That, combined with the weakness in his leg, pointed to the possibility of nerve damage. So Jeff visited a neurosurgeon, and had a series of MRIs, all of which showed nothing unusual going on. The neurosurgeon performed a minor procedure on Jeff’s leg to see if there was something pressing on the nerves, but again, all looked fine.

Jeff with children Zachary and Alexis

By this time, Jeff was wearing a foot brace to help him walk better. “But it was becoming very noticeable that something was wrong,” Sherry said. “His balance was off.” Sherry said that one doctor had mentioned MS (multiple sclerosis) but said that probably wasn’t what it was. Other than that, they hadn’t considered that Jeff had anything other than some type of nerve damage that just wasn’t showing up on tests.

“In the beginning of November, at the follow up appointment with the neurosurgeon, he noticed there were muscles twitching in Jeff’s arm and he suggested we make a follow up appointment with Jeff’s neurologist,” Sherry said.  “At this point, I decided to go to the doctor with him. I wanted to know what was going on.”

They went to the appointment with the neurologist who had helped Jeff with the headaches. This was the first time they heard words that they weren’t familiar with, but that would ultimately change their lives. “She (the doctor) said I’d like to test for ALS first. I didn’t have a clue what that was,” Sherry said, meaning she knew nothing about the disease itself. “When we were leaving, Jeff turned to me and said, ‘Do you know what that is?’ I said yes, it’s Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Jeff said, ‘There’s no treatment. No cure.’”

The Pearce Family, about a week before diagnosis

Jeff was scheduled to return in a week. In the meantime, the neurologist warned them, don’t get on the Internet and start reading about ALS. “Of course, that’s the first thing I did,” Sherry said. “And we prayed don’t let it be anything like that.”

But sadly, ALS is the diagnosis Jeff received. “It was like a bomb,” Sherry said. “I felt like the world ended on that day. And it did, because nothing was ever the same.” This was in mid-November, 2007.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. The affected nerve cells are motor neurons, which send signals to muscles throughout the body, controlling voluntary movement and muscle power. Without these signals, the muscles atrophy and the body dies. There is no cure, and it’s a fatal disease.

When Jeff was diagnosed, Sherry said, she heard things she had never imagined for their life together. Walkers and wheelchairs, breathing tubes, feeding tubes. “They were just suffocating me,” she said. The information was meant to be helpful, and eventually it would be, but at that time, Sherry needed to shut down and try to process this.

Trying to be normal, after diagnosis

Anger was foremost. “People would say they were praying for us,” she said, “but I’m thinking, exactly what are these prayers doing, because he’s getting worse. His progression was so fast it was hard to keep up with.”

She and Jeff tried desperate measures – dietary, detoxing, supplements, sweating it out, even a hair analysis that could give them a reading on minerals that he might need. They read everything they could find about the disease. “I think when you have no hope, you’re willing to try anything,” Sherry said.

Jeff began walking with a cane in December that year, and by January he was using a walker. He continued to work, but his job involved a lot of travel, and he finally had to stop working in February. Jeff had also been involved at Holy Cross through Community Ministries, and gave a lot of time and effort to Metro Lutheran Ministries. He continued to serve as an usher on Sundays, even while using a cane. In March and April of 2008, Sherry noticed that Jeff’s voice was starting to go. “He was getting harder to understand,” she said. By June, he was using a wheelchair.

As Jeff’s health continued to deteriorate, Sherry’s concern was trying to keep up with her kids while protecting them from a reality too harsh for them to grasp. As their classmates starting asking them if their dad was going to die, they asked Sherry that question. “I couldn’t lie to them,” Sherry said. “So I said we don’t know. We’re doing everything we can.”

But there was no escaping seeing Jeff grow thinner, be unable to move or talk, be confined to sitting in a wheelchair day after day, be fed through a tube. Looking back, Sherry said it was pure torture for Jeff, because he was completely cognizant of what was happening. He even found a way to express to her that he didn’t expect to be alive through the holidays that year, almost as though it were his wish.

In early April, 2009, Jeff made the decision to stop eating. He took only a little bit of water, and was administered morphine to keep him as comfortable as possible. Jeff grew up Lutheran, and his faith allowed him to accept that he wasn’t going to beat this. During this time, Sherry’s prayer was that he would die while the children were out of the house, and in such a way that she could handle. “And that’s exactly how it happened,” she said. 

The morning of April 15, Sherry said, she looked at Jeff, and saw the changes in breathing, and knew this would be the day. Alexis and Zachary were at school. Sherry had been Jeff’s primary caregiver throughout the past year and a half, and had used hospice care only minimally along with a few hours a week of paid help. That morning, she called for a hospice nurse to come over, but learned no one would be available until later that day. “I thought, I probably don’t want to do this myself,” Sherry said, “so I called the church and talked to (Pastor) Mike, and he came over.” The two kept watch over Jeff as he breathed his last. Pastor Mike said he was there for about two hours, praying and talking with Sherry, checking on Jeff's breathing, and remaining with her until the funeral home came to pick up his body.

The sixth anniversary of Jeff’s death was this past week, April 15, 2015. It fell on a Wednesday, which is also the same day of the week that Jeff passed away. Coincidentally, that is the day Sherry sat down to share this story. As she recounted the above, she described how she can see God’s hand all through it. Her initial anger was replaced with gratitude, as people called, came to visit, sat with Jeff so she could take a break, helped with her kids, and brought meals. “I didn’t think anyone was helping,” Sherry said, “but when I look back, they were all doing stuff. Those meals were wonderful. It became an adventure for my kids – what are we having for dinner tonight?” She continued, “It was easy at first to say where was God. Jeff got cheated out of raising two kids. I got cheated and it’s not fair. But it was God who brought those people into our lives. We were surrounded by so many people that cared for me and the kids. He was always there, providing for us.”

The year following Jeff’s death was one of transition. There was the initial relief from the intense burden of caregiving that was forced upon Sherry, followed with deep grief and the sense of great loss. There was worry about the future and finances and trying to be a single parent to two active children. Jeff died about a week before his 46^th birthday. So on April 23, his birthday, daughter Alexis said, “Daddy won’t be able to celebrate here with us but he can celebrate in heaven.”

Eventually, Sherry realized that life continues and so she started to let herself be more open to getting back out in its midst. The way she had met Jeff through mutual friends would repeat itself again in her life, as a friend introduced her to a man named Allen Meyer. “He brought me back to life,” Sherry said of Allen. “He knew my situation. He was open and genuine from the very beginning.”

Sherry and Allen Meyer

Sherry and Jeff had a good marriage, so she was okay with the thought of another relationship. Allen and Sherry connected right away, and their friendship grew as they got to know each other. They married in May, 2011.

“I don’t think there’s a day that goes by that I don’t think of Jeff,” Sherry said. “It was a lot of transition. What would have been, what could have been. You can either wallow in that or move on. I had to grow and learn.”

Sherry is happily married to Allen, but that doesn’t diminish the grief that still overtakes her occasionally. But Allen has come to understand how to be her friend during those times. For example, on April 15 a week ago, as Sherry shared this story, she got a text from Allen, who was out of town, letting her know he realized this was a difficult day for her, and that he was thinking of her.

We Christians celebrated Easter a couple of weeks ago. Easter is God’s story of death and resurrection, and it is why we can have hope through tragedy. Sherry’s story illustrates that hope.

Dianne Ready - a tingling feeling that something was wrong

Most of you have probably had a tingling arm at some time – that sensation that a limb was asleep and is awakening. Or the residual feeling after hitting your funny bone. But when is a tingle more than just that?

For Dianne Ready, the day she distinctly remembers such a tingle starting was Thanksgiving, 1980. She and her family were at her grandparents’ home, in St. Paul, Minnesota. “The tingling went down my right arm, and my neck,” Dianne said. “It was not painful, but annoying. I thought it will go away, but it didn’t go away.”

Dianne Ready serving at
Blessings Abound thrift store

A normal assumption was that it might be a pinched nerve, though generally there is pain with a pinched nerve. Dianne made a doctor’s appointment to get it checked out. The doctor sent her to the hospital to run some tests, including a spinal tap. The diagnosis was inconclusive. “I can tell you a hundred things you don’t have, but not what you have,” is what Dianne remembers the doctor saying. “It was disconcerting,” she said, “because I just wanted to know what it was.” Dianne was 32 at that time.

It would be another six years before that question would be answered, in large part because Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) had finally become widely available and reliable.

Through the next years, Dianne continued in her job with human resources for a firm that specialized in animal health care products, but most of her job involved typing. As the tingling went all the way to her fingertips, typing because increasingly difficult. Then colleagues started making comments that got her attention, such as, “What did you do to your leg? You’re limping.” Dianne hadn’t even been aware she was limping. As with her arm, the symptoms affected her right leg and foot.

By 1986, the symptoms had increased enough that Dianne knew something was wrong, and made another doctor’s appointment. This time, with the use of MRI, lesions were noted on her brain.

She and her husband, Dick, were asked to meet with the doctor once the test results were in. Dianne had met Dick when she was 18 and working at the Jones Store Co. in Prairie Village. “I worked in the sportswear department, and he came in looking for a gift for his girlfriend in Ohio, a sweater or a blouse,” Dianne said. “Everything I showed him, he said, ‘I don’t want to spend that much money.’” From that comment, Dianne inferred that Dick and his girlfriend must not have a good relationship. Sure enough, after that meeting, Dick, who also worked at the store, started stopping by the sportswear department just to say hi. Dianne and Dick were soon dating, and married in 1968.

Dianne and Dick Ready

At the doctor’s office, Dianne and Dick received news that would send their world spinning. The diagnosis was Multiple Sclerosis. “It was a real shock,” Dianne said. “I didn’t even know what questions to ask. I said, if there’s a cure do you keep me on a mailing list or what? And the doctor said that a cure isn’t likely.”

Dianne said that particular doctor’s bedside manner was poor. He didn’t offer any suggestions, a word of hope, or even much basic information. But the next day, as Dianne was trying to process what this all meant, her husband paid a visit to an organization that could help. “Dick had gone to the MS Society and gotten a lot of info,” she said. “I hadn’t thought of that. He even had a brochure on newly diagnosed people.”

The information contained details of a support group, so Dianne decided to try it. But what she found, she said, was that the people in the group were all at different stages than she was, more severe stages, so she didn’t return.

Multiple Sclerosis is an immune-mediated disease, where the immune system eats away at the protective covering, called myelin, of the nerves. The damaged myelin forms scar tissue, called sclerosis.

Dianne’s diagnosis was Primary-Progressive MS, which affects about 10 percent of people diagnosed with MS. The disease steadily worsens from the onset, though the rate of progress varies among individuals. PPMS involves less inflammation than the other three courses of MS, so there remains some controversy regarding whether any type of medication is useful. There is no cause or cure as yet identified, though it is thought to be triggered in a genetically susceptible person by one or more environmental factors. PPMS tends to affect the ability to walk more than the other three courses of MS.

For Dianne, who has lived with the disease almost 35 years, the progression has given her a variety of challenges. Her right hand is stiff and curled into a fist. She can use force to unbend her fingers, but they won’t then stay in that position. She uses a cane but walks with a slow gait. “I fought using a transport chair, a chair with wheels that someone pushes, for a long time,” she said. “I don’t know if it was vanity, or if I didn’t want to admit that I needed it.” But she has come to appreciate how helpful it is for navigating longer distances, such as when in a shopping mall or an airport. Dick is normally her navigator, but many others have helped.

One Sunday at worship, Dianne received an epiphany of sorts that would allow her to make a decision that she had been wanting to make for quite a while, and that was to leave her job. “The gospel was Matthew 6:25-34,” Dianne said, referring to a text that says we need not worry about tomorrow. “As I listened, I got all teary-eyed,” she said, “and I knew that God was speaking to me and would take care of me. And I said that’s it, I’m done. I informed my supervisor of the decision to go on long-term disability the next day.”

Dianne Ready (far right) with three others
from Holy Cross serving at Grand Avenue Temple

Though retired, Dianne doesn’t spend much time sitting idly. When she and Dick came to Holy Cross 10 years ago, she became involved in Community Ministries. “I was made aware of all the opportunities to help,” Dianne said. “There was so much to do. I was excited.”

Dianne especially enjoys serving monthly at a breakfast for clients of Metro Lutheran Ministries, where she greets and hands out silverware and plates. “I love the interaction with people,” she said, “their appreciation for what we do. Many say God bless you as they go through the line.”

She helps weekly at Blessings Abound thrift store, pricing donated items. At Holy Cross, she serves as a greeter at the welcome center. Dianne also is the intake coordinator for HopeBUILDERS, entering information in the database for clients who need help with such things as minor home repairs and wheelchair ramps. After she had mentioned to a few Holy Cross mission partners who are active with HopeBUILDERS that it would be nice to have easier access to the west wing of the building, a ramp appeared the next week.

Dianne also has mentored others diagnosed with MS. “I just want to let them know there’s hope,” she said, “to support them and tell them what my journey is like, that they’re not alone.”

She has not had to walk this path alone either. She and Dick have an adult son and daughter, and three grandchildren. But it is Dick who has been her rock. “God gave me an incredible and loving caregiver,” Dianne said, “who makes certain my life is easier and less stressful.”

Dianne also is thankful for family and friends who offer concern and support. “People in general are so kind, so considerate,” she said. “I’m truly blessed.”