Looking Back

I'm sitting in a hospital room listening to my father breathe. He's just gotten out of surgery. I've done this before. In January he had open heart surgery after having a stroke while visiting me in November. I'm comfortable here in this hospital. In a sad kind of way. I know which floor is the ICU floor. I know where the coffee makers are, the bathrooms. Somewhere there is a maternity floor, I bet. A much happier floor than the ones I am familiar with. On the fourth and fifth floor, people usually talk in quiet voices. Tears and red, puffy eyes are not uncommon. People are generally nice to strangers here on these floors. But within families emotions can run rampant. Emotion drips from the ceilings, it settles in the waiting rooms like fog above our pond out back.

I'm not really the emotional type. But I have my moments when every little thing makes me want to cry. The past four months have been like that. My friend Debby calls it being "emotionally wealthy." It almost sounds pretty when you say it like that. I know people who make emotionally wealthy look graceful. I'm not like that. I don't really "do" emotions well except for happy and excited. Those I do really, really well!

Today was not bad. It was sort of emergency surgery, but as far as surgeries go, it is one of the easier ones. He is high risk because of his recent open-heart surgery and subsequent very slow recovery.

So I've been here today, trying to love on him, trying to love on her. Just to be with her while we wait. Surgery was later than expected and longer than expected, but it went well. His gallbladder was gangrenous. It should have been pink, but it was swollen and black. It was dead, infected, and making him very sick. The surgeon showed us pictures and said he should have had it removed years ago.

Years.

I remember after his open heart surgery his blood work showed infection but they could not find it. He was constantly sick to his stomach. Even before surgery, he'd complained of nausea. He didn't feel great. But it didn't seem too bad. Nothing like the pain he had Saturday night which led to his ambulance ride and eventual admittance.

Inside his body was a horribly infected organ that was slowly hurting him, but no one found it until it was almost too late. A tiny poison growing and growing, killing the gallbladder, threatening to kill him.

Makes me wonder, did this contribute to his slower-than-expected recovery from heart surgery? Is this the infection they could not seem to find? Was this the reason food seemed to make him sick and never tasted good?

He's been on antibiotics more than a dozen times since January 3. He's had C-Diff from all the antibiotics. Could some of that have been avoided if we had known about his gallbladder?

But what I really wonder is what will change now? Over and over he has said he was too weak and didn't feel good enough to do things that would help him recover. Medical professionals hinted that he was depressed or not trying. That there was "no medical reason" for him not to be recovering. What if they were wrong? What if he was just sick? Oh how that is my hope. Oh, how I long to see my father up and walking and playing with his grandchildren. Oh, how my heart wishes!

I can't help but find parallels to our Christian walk in this. Sin in one little tiny part of our life threatens to kill us. It hampers our spiritual life, making us weak and ineffectual. Yet we don't go to the great physician to figure out the problem. We become complacent with things being "good enough" and we don't realize that sin is slowly killing us.

The Psalmist put it like this: "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

Oh, Lord! Help me to see. Cleanse me of any gangrene in my spiritual life. Renew my strength, and lead me in your way. Amen