The Fourth Floor at St. Mary’s

My friend was released from the hospital yesterday, three weeks after being admitted at death’s door. What an incredible story she has to tell. The fourth floor at St. Mary’s hospital is where many such stories start. When I arrived three weeks ago to sit with the family as they waited, it was my first trip back there in fifteen years. Back then, it was my anxious family waiting, wondering and filled with fear. 

I had just turned 45 and along with the arrival of my birthday, a nagging cough. For several weeks it got steadily worse, until finally I couldn’t sleep. Although, I wanted to wait until the following Monday to make another trip to the doctor, it was Pam who had insisted that I go to the emergency room on a Saturday. It had been that insistence that essentially saved my life. Once admitted, it was discovered that my nagging cough was being caused by a defective mitral valve which had been coming apart for several weeks. Blood was pooling around my heart whenever I laid down...congestive heart failure. 24 hours after being admitted, a surgeon with the bedside manner of an orangutan, was performing open heart surgery.

The details don’t matter, and I would rather not get into them anyway. Suffice it to say that it was a staggering event that had life changing consequences for me. But, as my friend returns home, I’m remembering things that I’d forgotten about when I came home after just a week at St. Mary’s. The primary emotion was a profound disorientation. What the heck had just happened to me? It’s like all of a sudden I had forgotten how normal was supposed to feel. I was grateful to be alive but not quite sure what this new life was going to be like. I felt damaged, the ugly 8 inch scar down my chest the physical manifestation of that damage. My emotions were all over the map. Poor Pam had never, ever seen me cry in our 20 years together, and now suddenly I was a water works. I remember wanting to see people...right up to the minute they arrived, then I counted the minutes until they left. It was such an odd feeling, having visitors. These were people who I loved and who loved me...but I remember feeling strangely embarrassed, wondering how people were seeing me. Did they think I was damaged? 

Then there were the kids from church. Back then I was a teacher of high school students in a very large and active youth group at Grove Avenue Baptist. Ordinarily, our house was full of such kids on the weekends. Now, Pam struggled to manage their visits. I’m told that many of them tried to visit me when I was still in the hospital but Pam had thought that unworkable and unwise. So instead, and I can’t remember if it was her suggestion or one of the kids, someone provided them with a piece of poster board which they all signed with their well wishes. Every time I looked at it, I would get choked up. Finally, I rolled it up and stuck it in my closet. Too many memories. 

But, watching my friend go though a far worse ordeal over these last three weeks, many of those memories have come roaring back. Although she possesses a far greater faith than me, I’m sure that she will experience some of the same disorientation, the same wide ranging emotional swings, the same mental exhaustion.

So, I couldn’t help myself. I found one of the two posters. It feels like a million years ago...

The other one had a big thing in the middle of it that said Braveheart. I remember feeling everything but brave. Terrified? Confused? Rattled? Yes. Brave?? Not a chance. My friend is brave. And everyone who prayed so fervently for her survival must continue praying for her complete recovery.