Praise God, He Still Heals Our Afflictions

by Bob Russell, ©2025

(Aug. 22, 2025) — I am writing this to be published on the 11th anniversary of the stroke that radically changed my life.  I am going to start at the beginning for people who have not read any of the previous editions.  I intended to publish this on August 19 but slept almost all day due to not sleeping the night before because of pain and muscle spasms from being on my feet so much for CedarPoint Recovery the evening before.  My sleep pattern has been a mess for a couple of weeks, the latest episode. 

On August 5, 2014 I had a complete physical examination, my usual yearly physical.  Dr. K., who has been my primary care physician for 40 years, told me that at age 64 I had the metabolism of a very healthy 40-year-old man.  Since I retired I worked out 4-6 hours a day Monday through Saturday and 2-3 hours on most Sundays.  I was 6 feet tall and 185 pounds of solid muscle.  I had a big bar for bench presses, small bars for various curl exercises, a treadmill, and a Bowflex exercise machine.  The weight bench doubled as a situp bench.  I also had a bicycle that I used every day except when it was rainy, icy, or snowy.  Safety determined my bicycle riding.  I would regularly go on 3-5 mile rides after my workout in the garage.

When I left the doctor’s office I went back to my workout regimen.  On August 19, 2014 I had finished my workout and was in the kitchen fixing supper about 5:30 when I suddenly began feeling dizzy and nauseous.  I went into the living room to sit down, thinking it was the heat.  The house was cool but I had gotten very hot from the workout that was done in a non-climate-controlled environment on a 95-degree day.  While sitting down, the lamp on my left suddenly seemed brighter so I tried to reach up and turn it off but couldn’t move my left arm, and when I leaned that way to reach the lamp with my right hand I fell over on my left side and couldn’t sit back up.  I was in a two-person recliner at the time.  I decided to get over on my stomach and get up that way.  I slid to the floor to stand up and reach the lamp with my right hand.  This is when I discovered my left leg also didn’t work. 

I still had no idea what was going on.  I couldn’t get up and somewhere in the process I passed out.  My wife came in from the bedroom and found me unconscious on the floor.  She immediately called 911 and managed to get a baby aspirin into me.  She had once worked in a nursing home and correctly diagnosed me as having had a stroke.  When the emergency people arrived they began to work on me.  I remember hearing voices and feeling people handling me.  I couldn’t see or comprehend what they were saying.  I was taken to St. John’s Hospital in Tulsa because they have an excellent stroke unit.

I was later told that they took me straight to radiology to do either a CT scan or an MRI to determine the situation.  When the attending neurologist saw the results he told his team to make me comfortable, that I wouldn’t live through the night.  A few days later he told my family that I would likely live for a while but as long as I lived I would be totally paralyzed, unable to get out of bed, and would be a mental vegetable, never knowing who I was, where I was, nor aware of anyone or anything going on around me.  I would be existing, not living.  They could keep my body alive with machines if necessary but I would be a mental vegetable with no hope of a real life. I spent ten days in the stroke ICU then was transferred to Claremore Nursing Home where I stayed for 71 days, 10 weeks and 1 day.

I don’t remember anything about the ambulance trip, the ten days in the hospital nor the first three weeks of my nursing home stay.  My first memory was three weeks into it.  That morning three members of the therapy team came to get me, put me in a wheelchair, and take me to the physical therapy room to begin rehabilitation.  They stood me up in the parallel bars.  David, the team leader, stood in front of me with his thigh against my left knee to keep it from buckling.  A woman was on each side to balance me because I had no ability to balance myself.

Another therapist put a Tulsa phone book on the floor in front of me and told me to step up on it but I couldn’t lift my leg up, and when she lifted my foot onto the book I couldn’t push myself up with my left leg to get my right foot up on the book.  She then put down a Claremore book (1/2″ thick), but I couldn’t step up on that, either.  They then helped me walk the ten feet length of the bars, turned me around and helped me back to the wheelchair where I had to sit and rest before doing it again.  I kept this up all day, one trip at a time, with about ten minutes to rest and catch my breath. 

By the end of the first week I was making ten trips at a time before having to rest.  The therapy room was open from 7:00 to 4:30 Monday through Friday and I would go right after breakfast and stay until they closed, taking only 30-45 minutes to eat lunch, then going back to work.  Bu the time I left the nursing home they called me their poster child of therapy.  I spent most of the day working on my own to speed my recovery.

I eventually got to the point of walking the halls by myself and even going outside on my own with a therapist coming out occasionally to check on me.  At the end of my stay in the nursing home I walked out to the car using a cane to help my balance.  I spent five years volunteering at the Claremore Veterans Center, a long-term care center for veterans, essentially a nursing home, but was dismissed when biden took office because I refused to take the covid shots.  I had amassed 8,534 volunteer hours at the time I was banned.  It wasn’t just me; several employees were fired, some resigned, and a few retired rather than buckle under to the biden regime of tyranny.  At my first office visit to the neurologist he told me that in 25 years he had never seen anyone suffer as much brain damage as I did and live more than a few hours, if that long.  I am truly a walking, talking, living, breathing miracle.

In May 2016 I had a dream that I would be totally healed from the effects of the stroke.  That day I had read in the Bible book of Joel where he prophesied that young men will see visions and old men would have dreams.  That night I dreamed that God told me that I would wake up in the morning totally healed and that people would be amazed at my recovery.  It wasn’t that morning, and when I jumped out of bed praising Jesus for healing me my left leg folded on me and I wound up on the floor, my right leg under my wife’s triple dresser and my left leg half under the bed.  The morning I dreamed about that night hasn’t come yet, but I believe it will come. 

I had subsequent dreams in April 2021 and April 2023.  I am still waiting in faith and doing anything I can to serve God and be a good example to others.  A few people who profess to be Christians say I will be restored in Heaven.  I tell them, “No, in this life, on this earth, I will be restored.”  Some have ridiculed me as arrogant to think I will be healed, but I know what my dreams said.  Anyone who denies that God can/will restore me is not a true believer.  I was told in my first dream that people would be amazed at my recovery.  In Heaven no one will be amazed at my restoration.  Everyone there will have a glorified body so for people to be amazed it has to happen during my life on earth.  I daily pray that each day will be the day, but when it isn’t I say, “Well, it isn’t today so it must be tomorrow.”   

I have no doubt I will be restored; it is a question of WHEN, not a question of IF.  I believe that there is someone who needs to see me disabled then see me healed to help them either now or in the future when they are going to have to deal with a debilitating physical issue, and how they see me deal with mine will give them the strength to get through their situation.  I want to see restoration now, but God has a plan and I will wait as long as it takes for the manifestation of healing.  God’s plan is better than anything I can come up with; He knows how this is going to turn out and I will accept whatever He does, whenever He does it.

I submit this in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, in faith, with responsibility given to me by Almighty God to honor His work and not let it die from neglect.