The weather was spitting snow at us when we came out of the hospital today. We were in the closed environment of the hospital most of yesterday and all of last night. It was wonderful to walk out as free people, and take up our normal lives again after even such a brief incarceration. The snow seemed like celebration confetti.
Troy came through the heart catheter with no complications. He progressed quickly and feels pretty good right now. He is just tired and so am ?.
He will have to have surgery (Lord willing) on the second December. He has a defective mitral value, a small hole in his heart, and two dogs. We are getting a little more accustomed to the idea. It doesn’t panic us as much as it did when we first started facing this as a reality.
It is always a sobering experience to go to the hospital and hand over your independence along with your clothes. Even the strongest person feels vulnerable in that situation. You meekly go where you are told even when it is a place where your heart fears to tread.
Many elderly people were on the fourth floor. The ancient man in the bed on the other side of Troy’s room was heartbreaking. He was an example of a person who has been kept alive too long. He was semi-comatose most of the time; when he wasn’t, he was moaning and struggling for breath. He could do nothing for himself anymore. The nurses would call his name repeatedly until he would give a grunt is response. He covered his face with the one hand that worked and kept it there, a poignant gesture that seemed appropriate for his situation.
As I listened to his gasping for air through the long night. I wondered about his past. Once he had been someone’s baby. He probably was somebody’s husband, father, and grandfather. I wondered what kind of work he had done and what his hobbies had been. I wondered what he looked like when he was vital, and if he had a sense of human then.
Being in this arena of suffering and death makes one ponder the brief and fragile life of man. How frightening this rapidly passing span of time would be without the assurances of our Father’s love and our hope of the kingdom.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One