Thoughts on Death

I was initially going to write an entry about a rough day I was having and how really it wasn't rough at all compared to some of the difficulties my patients were facing.  I get my point but, man, to be honest it’s tough seeing death before you and it can all be very bleak no matter who you are - patient, clinician, family, friends, sideliner. 

There were several patients that made yesterday tougher than normal.  One of my patients had Leukemia and was admitted due to a sudden onset of excrutiating abdominal pain.  All she wanted though, was to be able to attend her only son’s wedding in December, all of which would only be possible if the doctors could: 1) figure out what was wrong with her stomach problems, 2) successfully treat her stomach, 3) successfully give her a bone marrow transplant.  My heart went out to her.  There’s so much loss of control when you get cancer, and I think what makes it one of the worse diseases is that when you get it you know exactly what’s going on the whole time.  Other diseases sometimes leaves you incapable of moving about or thinking coherently in the world, but with cancer you may possibly live a normal life but with the continual afterthought that these are your last days.  It’s got to be pretty frightening. 

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What keeps coming to my mind is that passage about Lazarus, Mary, and Martha.  Chen Ye-Ye seems to have done a good job in drilling that passage in my mind.  The phrase that continues to pop up is this:

 “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” 

In all these cases I feel hopeless.  I’m ashamed to say it but I feel more hopeless than the patients and probably the doctors.  These people will die, maybe not now, but it will end sooner than they should.  Or more like, sooner than what I’d want. 

I touched the hands and legs of my patient and couldn’t help but think to myself that this softness and the warmth of the blood flowing through her body may cease.  That she may cease to exist. 

“Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’”

When I pray to God, do I take his answers for real?  Throughout the gospels Jesus speaks both figuratively and literally yet it’s so difficult to grasp the literalness of all his words. 

“I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.  Do you believe this?”

Do I believe this?  He is life and he gives us life.  He has the power to heal, to raise up sick, cancer-ridden souls from the dead.  He also says when we believe we “will never die”.  If I can semi-understand the first part and see that Jesus was being VERY literal, why can’t I grasp this last part?  We will never die.  We will never die. 

And Relient K's words continue to resound in my ear,

     Stay with me until my life is through, and on that day please take me home with you. 

First Grade

I remember distinctly the first time I met my first best friend.  Her name was Holly Roach and we were both quietly playing by ourselves on the playground at Apex Elementary.  While the other kids were rambunctiously throwing themselves over the bars, slides, and other swingy metal chains, Holly and I were off to the side playing in the sand.  She was walking on these little wooden knobs when she runs into me.  At that point I ask her "Do you want to be my friend?"

I used to think that making friends was complicated.  That kids knew how to do it - just ask, right?  And I thought to myself, 'how silly yet simple! But adults would never do that!"  And then I found myself doing just that... yesterday.

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Slightly obscure, I thought my prayer request at small group was really weird: "Please pray that I'll... make friends at work."  After I said it I could only think how incredibly depressing it sounded.  But I think now that it's a very valid request because work is work but if you have a friend at work then work is also more play, and work as play is twice as fun. 

So I was sitting on a bus on my way to the side doors of the hospital, half asleep, when a young Filipino guy sits next to me.  I ignore him and continue to ride, my eyes shut -- I assume he's a male nurse, recruited from the Phillipines (now, that was entirely wrong but that was just my assumption!).  When we reach the stop right before mine, he turns to me and asks if I need to get out, no accent -- I turn surprised and briefly glance at him and then realize... hey! I know this guy!  And I immediately begin to interrogate him.  Same highschool!  Same University! Same friends!  As we walk to the side doors I blurt out, "Hey! Let's be friends!!" and he's like, "Yeaah!" JUST as enthusiastically, I might add! 

So the moral of the story is:  It's okay to ask someone to be your friend.  (if you don't care if you might end up looking incredibly blunt, childish, and slightly desperate)  But look! An answered prayer request!  Thanks small group!

The art of aging

Age usually doesn't affect me.  Birthdays are just a passing thought.  Oh, I'm what age?  Oh yeah..

But then I turned 25 in August.  It's not a big number but it moved me.  It moved me into adulthood. 

I'd say I'm a late bloomer.  Because most people would've come to this understanding of 'adultness' at 18.  Some when they turned 16.  I think I heard once that the Amish and the Bible deemed a boy to be a man at the age of 12.  And here I am, 25 years young and I finally believe I want to grow up. 

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Today I met a lady in the hospital who had the most wonderful spirit.  She was... bubbly, in the most unannoying sense of the word.  Her husband was on my floor recovering from a surgery where they had amputated his foot.  I had no idea a week ago that I would be seeing him a week later and his foot would be gone.  And when I entered the room I was sad.  I wanted to cry a little.  And his eyes were closed and he didn't want to do a thing.  I was about to leave, defeated (because I always feel slightly disappointed when my patients don't do as well as I'd hope) when suddenly enters his wife.  And she brought into the room... joy.  He changed when he saw her.  Her spirit changed his spirit.  I asked them how long they had been married - 38 years.  A lifetime and yet there was still this sense of youth in their love for one another. 

What makes one old?  What makes one young?  What is maturity?  It certainly has everything and nothing to do with age.  I suppose it's about contentment.  Doing everything through this mysterious time thing with joy.  For me, it's knowing all things will work out in the end, even if not exactly how I expected.  Knowing that I'm not in control of time, or age, or... life.  I helped teach a Sunday school on Philippians 4:13 "I can do everything through Christ who strengthens me" and what I realized was, even in my "grown-upness" I will never be able to do everything on my own.  That must be the art of aging.  Maybe it's just about letting go. 

Vision & Reality