By Brenna Wiegand
High school graduation was just weeks away when Pam Grambusch was told she had multiple sclerosis. She was 18.
“First I was told I had a brain tumor and that I was going to die,” she said. “I ended up having multiple sclerosis which is just as bad, so to speak, but not as bad; not as deadly as that was.”
It provided an alternate explanation to “Maybe I’m just stupid” for the trouble she’s always had keeping up physically with her peers. At times she just couldn’t make her body turn a certain way while practicing with her cheerleading squad at Silverton High School.
While that knowledge alone was cold comfort, yet another pivotal event that same spring made her able to cope – and more than cope – with the long road ahead.
“I remember it as clear as day,” she said. “It was my mom’s birthday and instead of staying home with my folks I went to a friend’s house where I ended up accepting Christ.
“The Lord gave me a verse that has stayed with me my whole life – I’ve kept it in my heart and just cling to it – Acts 20:24: ‘I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me – the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.’”
The youthful, perpetually smiling wife and mother of two moved to Providence Benedictine Nursing Home two years ago. The intervening years have been fraught with sorrow and with joy, beginning with her mother’s death 18 months after Pam graduated.
Two months later, still shaken by her mother’s death, she was coaxed into meeting “a great guy” by a coworker who happened to be “the great guy’s mother.” Norm Grambusch and Pam Teeney met and it was love at first sight for them both. The last thing Pam wanted to do was ruin things by breaking the news to him. For Norm, it was the final puzzle piece that made sense of his life heretofore.
“Whenever I’d think of a future wife, I’d see myself with someone in a walker or chair – not usually something you’d wish for,” Norm said. “In one vision I was taking my future wife to a baseball game – and that was one of the first things we did when she got the wheelchair.”
“I was so scared to tell him, but he told me, ‘You’re the perfect girl for me.’ He got all excited and said God had told him he was going to be taking care of someone with a disease or disability.”
“I think if she’d told me she was perfectly healthy we wouldn’t have gotten married,” he said.
Norm, 49, and Pam, 44, have been married nearly 23 years. Those first few years were like a dream. They read books about the disease and sought ways to combat or alleviate it as they lived and served others wholeheartedly.
“Until – bam – it hit,” Pam said. “It was gradual and then it wasn’t.” They discovered she had the worst kind – chronic, debilitating – and that in addition to the brain lesions that cause one’s immune system virtually to attack itself, she also had them in her spine – rarer and more ravaging on the body.
No kids, the doctor said; it would only make it worse. Pam went for a second opinion.
“I went home and prayed – and I decided it was OK.” The couple’s sons are Josh Aaron, 19, and Joel Aaron, 17.
“I gave them the same middle name to connect them for life,” she said. “I hope it works.”
The couple was overjoyed with the boys even as a cloud of sorrow hovered. The disease plunged on and Pam felt the sting of being unable to interact with them in the way she desired.
“I’ll be honest, we didn’t have happiness a lot of times, but we had joy, which is a much different thing,” said Norm, alluding to the promise of an eternal life free of pain and sorrow that awaits a Christian when his earthly existence is through.
“Joy is inside and part of you; happiness is temporal and there are times you can’t be happy when you’re sitting there in pain and you can’t decorate the Christmas tree.”
The boys were 5 and 7 when they witnessed their mom’s last steps.
“The most I can remember is when she was with a cane,” her son Joel said. “I don’t really remember her walking normally.”
“I remember when she walked; I got to see every stage of it happen,” said Josh Grambusch, 19. “It was really tough, especially when she used to home school me and her disease was getting worse and she didn’t have the energy… I was really sad when she told me I was going to public school.”
“She was going 100 percent right up to the time it hit her,” said Norm, adding that once she quit home-schooling, “she was always at the school.”
Before long even this became impossible and Norm said they went into survival mode.
“When it hit it went fast – within a year it just went.”
All three miss the vibrant, cheerful tone she set in their home – and those wonderful meals.
“Her food was definitely something nice, and she used to can and that was amazing,” Josh said.
“She loved being a homemaker and always cooked the best meals,” Joel said. “She loved cooking Lebanese food because we’re of Lebanese heritage. She always made sure we ate as a family, even after she was put in a chair.”
She was adamant the boys read their Bible, though as they got older she began offering incentives, say, for reading the Bible in a year. However they balked at the time, both say their mother’s strong trust in God is something they have always valued.
“…Always praying, always funny, definitely more optimistic than I would ever imagine someone in that situation,” Joel said. “I’ll be having a bad day, just moping around, and one of my friends will say, ‘Act like your mom’; it’s really cool.”
Two years ago, Pam had to leave her home.
“I couldn’t do it anymore,” she said. “My husband took care of me for 10 years once I was in the wheelchair, but it got to where that was no longer possible.”
“MS is like being paralyzed but you can feel everything,” Norm said. “She doesn’t have the luxury of just laying in bed and not feeling anything; she feels everything. When I used to put her to bed I’d always grab the sheets under her and pull real hard to get every wrinkle out of it because once I get in the truck and drive off she’s stuck like that.”
He’s grateful for his job driving truck for Food Services of America and the good medical insurance it provides, but it means long days away.
“It became a never-ending battle here with me working 14-16 hour days,” Norm said. “I couldn’t care for her the way I am supposed to. I don’t know what we would have done without all the help from our great family; I just don’t know.”
If it had to be, they agreed Providence Benedictine Nursing Home would be the next-best thing to home.
“We try to be content in all things,” Norm said. “The disease robs the person and the family of a lot of stuff.” Their decision seemed right when, the week after Pam moved to Benedictine he threw his back out and couldn’t move for two weeks. Though an emotional transition, the move has helped calm Pam’s condition.
It’s been a painful couple of years for their oldest son Josh, who said he has somewhat separated himself from the family.
“It was a lot easier to deal with when, yeah, she’s using a cane, now she’s using a walker, getting into a wheelchair,” Josh said. “But now it’s kind of hard thinking about how far it’s gone, and now it’s just bad; closer to more negative things – and those things transition really slowly.
“I don’t think about it in that way very often,” Josh said. “When I do, I realize it’s a lot different than it was.”
“We were so active before she really got hit and I think that kind of helps; that she didn’t just sit on the sidelines,” Norm said.
Though she sheds a lot of tears, Pam persists in finding the good in every situation.
“I am the youngest person here and love all the attention,” she said. Staff and residents alike are inspired by her, and friends who have gone to cheer her up usually find the opposite happens.
With very little use of her body, Grambusch has had to trade an active, outdoorsy life for one whose highlights consist of TV, going to lunch and bingo.
“I have a lot of time to think – too much – but that’s where TV comes in,” she said. “You stare at the TV; get into Criminal Minds, and it’s a done deal.”
The day’s challenges and disappointments melt away when Norm arrives for his nightly visit. Joel said despite a heavy work schedule and two sons “who like to get into trouble,” he doesn’t know of a day his dad has missed.
“My very favorite thing is just hanging out with him even if we are just watching TV,” she said. “I would love to cook; I would love to do laundry; I would love to vacuum.”
“Pam is down to her left arm and her neck,” Norm said. “She used to be able to put both arms around my neck when I’d lift her. But to pick her up to me is nothing.”
“Even though I’m going through this awful thing, it’s not that awful; with the Lord I can handle it and I will,” she said. “I’m able to share with people and laugh with people and I always have a smile on my face and they look at me like, ‘What’s your problem, lady?’”
