Monday, November 12, 2007

SURGERY AND THE HEART-SHAPED CLOUD


The surgery is tentatively scheduled for Thursday morning unless it's moved up. The neurosurgeon says he will remove all of the tumor, as opposed to the Mayo neuroradiologist who diagnosed this bugger and said they don't do that anymore, that they will go in, get a biopsy, and immediately start me on chemo and radiation. Don't know why the difference, but I'm kinda' glad they're going to try and get it. They'll shave my head only a little in the back where the orange-sized tumor is located, make an S-shaped incision, cut out a piece of my skull, and go in and get the tumor, then sew the skull back and my skin back. Only a last week, if you'd been saying things like that in front me of me, I would've gotten weak. Once, when my sister had gall bladder surgery, I went to sit with her at the hospital, and the nurse came in and said, "Would you like to see your sister's incision?" and without waiting for an answering, she peeled back the bandages that revealed a long, ugly scar and a drain tube sticking out because she'd gotten peritonitis and almost died, so there was that ugly thing in front of my eyes, and I passed out cold. The nurse shrieked (I'm later told; I was out cold), left my poor sick sister, and ran to me to nurse me. Medical situations have always left me weak and squeamish. As pastors, when we go visiting our parishioners in the many hospitals our wonderful city has, if one case is particularly bad or gory (like a burn patient or a grotesquely swelled-up patient), Milton will say outside the hospital room door, "You just wait right here. I'll go in and make this visit." And sometimes when the patient is explaining the gory details, I literally get weak and grab onto Milton's hand. Hard.


Reminds me of when my brother-in-law Ron had hernia surgery years ago, and all the little church ladies came to visit him, and he said, with a twinkle in his laughing eyes and a slight raise to the bedsheet, "You wanna' see where I had my surgery?" and the little old church ladies are turning green and then red and then green again, and he drops the sheet and points out the door. "It was just down the hall. In Operation Room 3." We've always gotten a chuckle out of that story.


The day of my surgery, they will line my entire head, at hairline, I think, with silver snaps, and then they'll put an astronaut's helmet on me and run me into a high definition MRI so they can map the tumor for the surgery.


Is this happening to me? I like to cook and bake and clean (yes, I actually like it), and I like to work in the church and write at my computer and visit sick folks. I shouldn't be the one crawling up on an operating room table!!


But back to my positive faith thoughts. God is going to help me through. God is going to help me through. You see, there's this cloud of peace about me. It descended on my on Tuesday night, right after I got home from the eye doctor's office. I had cried all the way home, boohooing like I don't know what, when I had been told of my periphereal vision loss and an MRI to follow, and all I could think of was my writing career was down the tubes, and I called all my family on my cell phone and COULDN'T REACH A ONE! And I cried and cried and cried. And when Milton finally got home from the church and I told him, he held me and I cried some more.


And then, and then, and then, AND THEN, all of a sudden, a supernatural peace descended on me, and I can't describe it, it was like the cloud over the Israelites that God led them by, but all I know is it hung over me and even enveloped me at times, and when that neuroradiologist at Mayo delivered that awful news to me, I sat there like a journalist taking it all in calmly and asking intelligent questions, and he said, "I've delivered this news to scores of people, and I've never seen anyone take it like you are," and I said, "Well, doctor, we're pastors, and I called our prayer chain last night, and I've got lots and lots of people praying for me, plus we have nearly 30 ministers and wives in our immediate family, and they're all praying, and this calm is the peace of God," and you could see in his eyes how he was marveling, and the three nurses who were there, too.


And when, after 30-40 minutes of talking to us, with me asking all these intelligent questions, that the nurse walked us to the parking garage (Mayo is a huge campus), she said in a soft voice, "You know with all this faith surrounding you, and all these people that are praying..." her voice dropped to a whisper "...I have seen miracles..." And I said, "Oh, thank you for saying that. That means so much to me." Don't know if she was a Christian. By the way she said it, I'm not sure. But I know God used her to speak a word of faith into my heart, and I think that's when the cloud of peace grew larger over my soul. Perhaps my cloud is heart-shaped. I KNOW it's straight from the throne of God.

4 Comments:

At 8:25 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good Morning, Kristy,
Thanks for sharing more of your journey with us. I am glad your family is with you and you have so many dear friends praying for you. I will be lifting you up this week and especially on Thursday.
"For the LORD your God is the One who goes with you against your enemies to give you victory." Deut 20:4.
Love and prayers,
Carrie

 
At 9:11 AM, Blogger Crystal Laine said...

Kristy, For some reason I haven't been able to leave a comment until today. I can tell you that I'm praying for you--which I am--but just a couple days ago I was reading John 17:20-21 and it occurs to me that Jesus is praying for YOU and that your name is in the verses: "My prayer is not for them alone, I pray also for [KRISTY]all who will believe in me through their message that all them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me."

There's a lot going on in those verses--just as there is much going on with your story.

Love the heart cloud!

 
At 10:02 AM, Blogger Richard L. Mabry, MD said...

Kristy,
Like all your friends, I'm following your postings and praying almost constantly for you. It occurs to me, as I read what you've written over the past few days, that what you're doing is journaling--the same thing that kept me (relatively) sane after the loss I suffered. I hope you'll save all this, because my sense is that God will use your experience and your writing talent to produce a work that can guide and sustain others through similar experiences.
Know that you are loved, respected, and being held up with a great deal of prayer.
"Doctor Richard"

 
At 2:43 PM, Blogger PatriciaW said...

There is NOTHING like the peace of God. As long as you have that, you have everything you need.

 

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