Friday, May 22, 2009
Cloverdale mother and son continue to face his health challenges
"In July I'll be 78. The Lord gives me the strength to care for him," Cloverdale's Sue Sink says of her son, Michael Fringer.
Michael Fringer with his mother, Sue Sink, in 2004. —Roanoke Times File 2004
Priscilla Richardson is columnist The Botetourt View. You can contact her at 981-3430 or via e-mail.
Priscilla Richardson
Recent columns
Here's how Michael Fringer's mother, Cloverdale's Sue Sink, tells the story: "It was when he was seven and half and in school. He got sick, we took him to the hospital with a fever of 105. They put him in ice water, then he went into a coma for four weeks.
"I never left him for four weeks. I slept with him until he came out of it. They kept X-raying him, they thought he'd swallowed a safety pin. When they did surgery they saw the aorta ready to pop. They had to remove a lung because it had pushed against his lung." This all took place 50 years ago and who knows what would be the outcome if it happened today.
The result back then: when the blood got cut off to his brain and his lung, the lung died, and his brain was affected, Sink explains. Two surgeries, starting with one in 1958 at the Mayo Clinic, repaired his heart and replaced heart valves. But from that time on, "he's retarded."
When Michael became ill, Sink already had two children, a boy and girl. "Their Daddy looked after them" while she was with Michael around the clock. After she brought him home, "he had a home bound teacher for about six months but then they found out he wasn't able to concentrate." So his schooling stopped.
With this homecoming, Sink started her career of caring for Michael. "In July I'll be 78. The Lord gives me the strength to care for him." And Sink has needed strength. Her husband and Michael's father, Frank Fringer, an expert bricklayer, died in 1982. She in the meantime had started working full time at the Cloverdale school in the cafeteria. She married again, to Guy Sink, who also is now deceased.
Until recently, Michael would walk around his Cloverdale neighborhood, doing small chores or just visiting. He loved going to Lawrence Transfer to talk to folks there. Michael's routine for years was walking around in the morning and then coming home for lunch and television time. He even was called Cloverdale's unofficial mayor.
But then Michael landed back in the hospital again, for 103 days this time. While there, he fell out of bed, so his home care routine was now including physical therapy to help him get out of the wheelchair, back to walking again. The night before I met with him and his mother at their home, they'd spent many hours at the emergency room because of low potassium. He suffers from diabetes as well as his heart and lung problems.
Then over the Mother's Day weekend, Sink had to call 911 again and get him back in the hospital. At this time, she has no idea what nursing home the hospital will send him to or even for how long.
As Sink knows, her son has trouble understanding what goes on around him. "Sometimes he knows you and sometimes he doesn't," she said. "Usually he knows most of his friends in church," but these are strangers caring for him.
When I saw him at home he watched television and admitted he likes it, "Oh, yeah." And he also said everyone is nice to him. He even gave the visiting nurse a wolf whistle and a big smile as she came in.
You have to wonder how Sink does it. "I prayed just send me someone to talk to, and He did. God answers prayers. I just keep on keeping on. A mother's love doesn't leave you til you're put in the ground."
