“Once it’s over, you write it all down in second person, so that it doesn’t sound like you who’s complaining. So it doesn’t sound like a complaint.

Because you have been blessed.

You have been blessed.

You have been blessed.”

I FEEL TWO TOTALLY CONTRADICTORY things about this post. I want to write it, and I don’t want to write it—both with all my heart. But when you’ve lived through an experience that divides your life into Before and After, it pretty much demands to be acknowledged, so maybe it’s more like, I need to write it.

So I’ve borrowed the opening of my mentor Bret Lott’s wonderful essay, Toward Humility, to help myself get started.

Dinner at Leilani’s–the night before everything goes south . . .

Here we go . . .

You are on a beautiful Maui beach and your husband cannot walk.

You want to say that this is sudden, but the truth is he hasn’t really been himself for over a year now, and given his family history, you have started to worry that this is the beginning of dreaded Alzheimer’s.

Now, in this moment on the beach, even though the condo where you’re staying is quite close, you have no idea if you’ll be able to get him back there. You think about calling 911, but the scene is all wrong—everyone around you is strolling by, smiling, taking photos, jumping in the waves, and arranging towels and umbrellas on the beach for a carefree day in the sun.

And you are too proud, and probably somewhat in denial, and besides, you know he’ll be totally embarrassed because even as he keeps stumbling on the beach, he says that he’s fine, it’s just that he’s tired and his back hurts.

So you take it in stages, and finally you get him safely back and parked on the couch in the condo. But you’re starting to panic now because it’s the third day of your long-awaited vacation and you are alone, thousands of miles from everyone you know, and your husband is having trouble walking.

Fast forward . . .

You’ve driven 45 minutes all the way from Kaanapali back to Maui General Hospital in Kahului in a piece of crap rental car which, if your life were a movie, would have been the first clue that everything is about to go horribly wrong.

Before it goes horribly right—but you don’t know that yet.

You’ve talked to your doctor at home, and he’s advised taking your husband to the ER. Though you’ve had lunch, neither of you has showered and you’re all sticky and sweaty from your semi-disastrous beach walk and when you walk into the ER, it’s around 2:00 pm.

Five hours later, they finally call his name and take you both back, but they don’t have enough rooms, so he is on a gurney in the hallway, and you are sitting on a chair next to him. You’re wearing a skort (which you never do at home) and your bare upper legs are sticking to the plastic seat. But that is not the worst thing because you suddenly realize you’ve stepped into one of those hospital TV dramas because you are near the door where the ambulances arrive, so you watch the parade of EMTs guiding gurneys past with injured people on them. People like your husband, only there is more blood and a lot more swearing, which makes you want to tell the next nurse who goes by that really you are fine and he is fine and it was all a terrible mistake, and you’ll just be going now.

But it’s too late, because you’re in their system and they’ve started their evaluation process because you’ve said something is wrong and now it’s on them to figure out what it is. Occasionally, they take him off for tests or scans and he comes back and there is still no news and hours drag on and you watch the parade of broken people pass by and your thighs stick to the stupid chair until you can’t stand it anymore and finally you climb onto the gurney with him.

And somewhere in that endless blur of time, the petite ER doctor comes and plops herself down on the gurney between the two of you. And she’s holding her phone and showing you the CT scan of your husband’s head and you can see this evil-looking black blob and she’s telling you there’s inflammation in his brain and that the worst-case scenario is that it’s a cancerous brain tumor and the best case scenario is . . . but you can’t take it in, because now your brain has shut down. Because either way, she says, it has to come out.

And in the midst of this, you realize that she, the doctor, is as shocked by this as you are, and you blurt that out and she agrees and says she ordered a CT scan on a whim even though she didn’t expect it to actually show anything. And she asks the first of what will become the all-too-familiar questions: Has he been having headaches? Numbness in his limbs? And the answer is no, he’s just been constantly exhausted and now he’s having trouble walking.

So they take him off for an MRI and it’s almost midnight now and the doctor tells you that they are going to keep him in the hospital, and you are shocked again because it has never occurred to you that you will have to drive back to the condo without him. When he comes back, you say goodbye and the doctor hugs you and says how sorry she is, and you go outside in the dark to your piece of crap rental car and you pray. Because the condo is forty-five minutes away along a dark highway with a 45-mph speed limit that twists and turns along Maui’s beautiful coastline, and there are big rocks and tunnels and nobody actually ever wants to drive 45 mph on that road except you in your piece of crap rental car because your life has suddenly become surreal. And if someone in a big truck looms up behind you with their lights glaring into your rearview mirror, you don’t know if you’ll be able to keep from crashing into a giant rock and then you’ll both be in the hospital.

So you pray and you start driving, constantly glancing in your rearview mirror. Help me, Jesus, help me. You tense up when you see the pinpoint of headlights because you know soon they’ll be on you.

But something strange happens. All the way back from Kahului to Kaanapali, the headlights never get closer. Never—not even once. And you can only conclude that it must be because your car is surrounded by angels.

Because you don’t know it yet, but you have been blessed.

You have been blessed.

You have been blessed.

So you get back to the condo and sleep for maybe three hours and take a blessed shower, and then you drive back to the hospital. And you’re wearing a long summer dress because you’ve decided that no matter what else happens today, your thighs will not be sticking to a plastic chair. You’re waiting for the elevator when the ER doctor goes by and she recognizes you and comes and gives you a hug and says, I’m so sorry.

And you want to say, for what? but you don’t. She sits down with you and says the neurosurgeon has seen your husband’s MRI and it appears to be the benign kind of brain tumor, and she writes down the word for you in your journal: meningioma.

You make your way up to the ICU and your husband looks better than he’s looked in months because the steroids they’re giving him to reduce the swelling in his brain are already helping. And after checking in with him, you call your kids, who are in shock because he’s told them and even though they’re in their 30s, you can feel that they want you to tell them it’s going to be all right, but you can’t because you don’t know if it will. Then you call your sisters and their reactions after you say the unimaginable sentence, Kurt has a brain tumor, are exactly the same: dead silence.

So you tell them all that you know God is with you, because that is truly all you know in this moment.

Then the neurosurgeon comes, and unbeknownst to you, your phone has called your dear friend, the one who’s kindly offered you this time in her Maui condo because she’s a lovely, generous person and she knows how worried you’ve been about your husband. Your phone is lying on the bedside table as the neurosurgeon starts to explain that the tumor and its accompanying swelling is taking up so much space in your husband’s head that it’s pushed his brain off midline, and that’s why he’s having trouble walking. And you tell him there is Alzheimer’s in your husband’s family and he says quite cheerfully that though your husband has a brain tumor, he does not have dementia, and you think that someday you are going to be really happy about that.

Because then the discussion devolves into next steps because even though they could do the surgery there in Maui, he would have to undergo rehab and you could be stuck there for weeks before they would clear him to fly home. And he is on steroids and anti-seizure meds and they are talking hospital-to-hospital discharge and the word Medevac is even mentioned and now your brain is shutting down again because it’s all so surreal, and the only thing that’s clear is that your vacation is over and the beach walks and tropical sunsets you’ve been dreaming of are not going to happen.

So you call your dear friend Sue, the one who has lent you her beautiful condo on Maui, and she asks if you would like her to come and you do but how can you say it? So you say I don’t know, but the Holy Spirit intervenes, and she is able to hear what you are really saying, and she says, I’m coming. She texts that she’ll be on a flight that lands in Kahului at 9:30 that night, and it is only much later that you realize she would have had barely two hours to get herself together, cancel all her plans, and get herself to the airport and onto that six-hour flight.

You drive back to the condo and have a total meltdown, crying and screaming at God that it’s not fair and why is this happening when your husband was so looking forward to this vacation and now it’s ruined. Eventually, you pull yourself together and walk over to the shopping mall because you cannot keep track of anything, and if you don’t buy a different bag and some other things to help yourself stay organized, you really will lose your mind.

And then you drive your piece of crap car back to Kahului again and sit with your husband until 9:15 or so because you’ve looked at the map on your phone and it should be an easy 10-minute drive from the hospital to the airport. But it’s dark again by then and your phone is doing that stupid thing where it won’t talk to you and suddenly it’s 9:30 and you are not at the airport like you said you would be, you are in a piece of crap rental car yelling, Jesus, where’s the airport? And about half a block further on, there he is, holding a sign that says AIRPORT with an arrow pointing left.

So you say Thank you, Jesus and you turn left and pull into the pickup lane just as your friend is walking to the curb with her phone to her ear because she’s wondering where you are. And when you get out of the car, she starts laughing because she can see that for once you have not been exaggerating and your car really is a piece of crap, and then you hug and jump in again and start back to Kaanapali.

And this time, you have to pull off the road three times because of the lights flooding into your rearview mirror, but it doesn’t bother you as much because now your dear friend is with you and you are not alone, and because you know now that there really were angels all around your car the night before.

You and your dear friend, Sue

And then your friend tells you that when you laid your phone on the bedside table while the neurosurgeon was talking to you at the hospital, your phone called her and she heard the entire conversation, and did you mean to do that? And no, you did not mean to do that because you are not that smart, but God is, and he clearly meant for her to hear it because now she is here to help you, and she knows everything you know.

Because you have been blessed.

You have been blessed.

You have been blessed.

And by the next morning, the doctors have all changed their minds.

To be continued . . .

 

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