The Adventure Continues

Our Church Council granted me a sabbatical for three months during the summer of 2010. My intention was to learn Latin American Spanish and to explore Latin American cultures here and abroad. Now that I have had some opportunities to lead mission trips to Yuscaran, Honduras, and to visit Mexico three times, the adventure continues.



Seeking New Horizons

Seeking New Horizons

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Recovery at the Hospital

     The surgery at the hospital went very well.  The team removed three cysts instead of just one, and I came home on Sunday afternoon, as planned.  I spent about 25 hours in the recovery room, which by Sunday morning, was very sparsely populated.  I had a lot of time to think and pray, but I don't know how coherent I was at either of those activities, although God has already taken care of the prayer part in knowing before I do what I am praying.
     The coherence of thought, or lack thereof, has been an interesting experience.  With so little to occupy my mind, I played with the breathing part of the monitor.  I could make the squiggly white line do things by just altering my breathing.  I was able to get the breathing rate up to 47 with short breaths, and down to 6 with long slow breaths.  The latter set off some sort of little alarm, so I decided to stop that fun.
     The most interesting things happening were visits from the staff, from my family, and from Karen Goltz who paid me a pastoral visit.  In all these times, I seemed to me to be rational.  However, Doreen told me I had been uncharacteristically chatty.  One nurse reminded me I had met her in the pre-op room, but I needed prompting to recall our pleasant conversation.  There were times when, of course, I did not remember things, but this time, by concentrating, I was able to discover some things that I remembered knowing before I forgot them.
     This all has seemed interesting to me because I am aware of how amazingly frail and vulnerable I am during this whole procedure.  It's not very difficult for me to surrender control to professionals and to God during all of this, but it is a bit unnerving to be losing a bit of my mind, a tad of my personality, and a lot of my personal space.  When an "event" is putting on a jonny, or simply standing up by myself, then I know how far from "normal" I have strayed.
     Now I would like to draw a profound conclusion from all of this, but I don't have one.  Even if I did, I'm not sure if I am just rambling, or if I have opened up a new door to self-understanding.  So for today, I just leave all this as a group of observations.  One thing I do know, however, is how profoundly thankful I am for all of the people taking care of me during this vulnerable time.  If you are reading this, you are probably among them, and so I say "Thank you!"

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