Saturday morning I started out on positive note. Life was good...all things considered. As I sat on the porch with my morning coffee and dogs at my feet I planned my second blog post full of wisdom I have acquired from observing our four English Springer Spaniels. Then I logged onto Facebook to catch up with the happenings of my friends and family and learned that a dear friend had passed away in the night.
I was wracked with sobs that disturbed all of my four-legged kids as I tried to come to terms with what I thought was such an unfair thing to happen, while I tried to keep from damaging my four incisions that were still at a vulnerable stage of healing. Finally settling down to a whimper that resembled a canine whine, I reasoned through the loss of my friend.
The last time I saw Kathy was about three weeks before her surgery to remove a pre-cancerous cyst from her pancreas. She was obviously disturbed about her medical condition and anxious about the upcoming surgery. I verbally reassured her, keeping quiet about my own impending surgery to remove my right kidney that had a tumor. We were relatively certain the tumor was a carcinoma, but my prognosis was good: the tumor was totally contained in the kidney, so removal of the kidney equalled total cure, with no chemo or radiation therapy indicated. Although I didn't say anything, I am ashamed to say that my thoughts were along the line that removal of a pre-cancerous cyst is small potatoes next to loss of a cancerous organ. Furthermore, I had been working on embracing what is, without stewing over what isn't. I came across a quote from George Macdonald, 19th century minister, who said, "You have a disagreeablee duty to do at twelve o'clock. Do not blacken nine and ten and eleven, and all between, with the color of twelve." These became words to live by for me and since the occasion of our meeting was a farewell party, I didn't want to dwell on what I was trying to not think of at all.
Both surgeries went well. I woke up with palsy of my right radial nerve, basically rendering my right hand a dead appendage at the end of an arm with limited function, but with a good prognosis: the nerve WILL repair itself with time. I found out on Friday, Kathy's 53rd birthday, that she was still in the hospital. She had suffered infections after her surgery and had been in and out of ICU for three weeks. That night she passed away, but not before relating to a mutual friend that everything was according to God's timing. The surgery that was supposed to keep her from developing cancer in eight to nine years, in the end, took her life.
This series of events rocked me to the core. I often remark that it is what it is and it can't be what it's not. It seems rather too pragmatic at times, but it makes much of life easier to bear, even to the point of waking up from abdominal surgery with a paralyzed arm. But my brain just couldn't wrap around something that seemed viscerally wrong. I had been resigned to whatever was my outcome prior to my surgery. I was prepared for the possibility of things going poorly. But I wasn't prepared to lose my dear friend, whom we laid to rest yesterday. As I watched the slide show that attempted to summarize Kathy's life with my palsied hand on my lap, surrounded by friends who loved her just as much as I did, I HAD to come to terms with what is. Kathy is gone. I can't change that fact, as much as I'd like. And I still have work to do to return to a functional capacity. Life is what it is, that's true, but it's also what we make of it, and my goal today is to embrace today, because it is.
