Update and Some Thoughts

Harold is recovering well and in many ways feeling better than before his surgery. We’ve walked laps around the neurology floor and hope to be released to go home tomorrow.

Meanwhile I’ve had a lot of time to reflect. Here are some thoughts.

At what point do traumatic experiences become routine? I never thought brain surgery would seem routine but by the time we approached craniotomy number six, it was. Sheer repetition had removed many of the unknowns and blunted our natural anxiety. Blunted but not removed.

We arrived at the hospital fully aware of what to expect. Check in, MRI, pre-op, surgery, waiting room hours, recovery, critical care, long sleepless night. Harold probably had the pre-op questions memorized and could have saved everybody time by just saying yes, yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes, yes, yes . . . etc. In some ways it saddened me that we were less alive to the moment. Was today’s surgery less critical than Harold’s first? No. Was the outcome today less pivotal to the hopes and dreams of our future? No. So what had changed and was that change good or bad?

These were my thoughts as I started the waiting room vigil, but I put them aside, intent on loosing myself in a book. I almost succeeded.

I was first pulled out by the weeping of a women seated on a sofa across from me.   I tried to catch her eye, to see if I could help, but she wouldn't look up. Then I was distracted by a call from family wanting an update on Harold. Ironically, when I ended the call the woman on the sofa reached out to me, apparently overhearing my report. Then I learned her story. 

She had been in the waiting area since early morning and was by now overcome with anxiety for her husband, the victim of a horrific motorcycle accident. This wasn’t new trauma. The accident had occurred four years before. This was the twelfth in a series of surgeries to repair their loss. She understood the long road to healing and acknowledged the hand of God in their lives. Repetition had not removed her pain. Sometimes it overcame her but that pain also allowed her to recognize the needs of others.

I met another woman, the daughter of a man fighting late stage metastatic cancer. She was present to support him as he underwent surgery to remove tumors that had spread to vital organs in his body. She seemed emotionally detached as she described his battle which started with a melanoma tumor in his brain twenty years earlier. That diagnosis, so similar to Harold's, caught my attention. Twenty years! Did she realize how fabulous that sounded? Her father, now in his 70’s, had survived with cancer for twenty years.

There was the stoic wife of a man undergoing back surgery, the third in three years. She'd recognized the vulnerability of the woman on the sofa and had reached out earlier to comfort her. There was a family from East Africa isolated by language but united in the universal worry over a loved one. I overheard a nurse sharing her problems with a co-worker but adding, “God is a good God. Every day I wake up, I thank him.”

And then there was my daughter, Megan, who arrived late in the afternoon bringing a bundle of sunshine. It was Aubrey’s first public outing. I snuggled my new granddaughter close and she fell asleep in my arms. I  felt deep, deep peace.

Now I revisit the questions: Is it good or bad to feel things acutely? Does repetition blunt or enhance the experience?

Here are my conclusions:  In some ways repetition allows us to feel less. Like tempered steel we gain the strength and capacity to endure. In some ways it allows us to feel more. Living with prolonged challenges allows us to recognize and feel the continual outpouring of love and comfort offered by God. Our challenges allow us to empathize and prompt us to share that comfort with others. And our pain helps us appreciate moments of pure joy.

The Apostle Paul explains it this way:
 
3 Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;

4 Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.
                                                                           2 Corinthians 1: 3-4