Morphine

February 2003

So you get married, move cross-country, start the dream job, and then one day you wake up to an axe burned into your shoulder and lose the ability to walk.

The sky is still blue but is no longer for you. As you lie in the stale ICU with wires, tubes, and needles stuck in you, you wonder what the wind felt like on your skin. So quickly everything we take for granted becomes extraordinary, to be wished for, dreamt about, hoped for.

Morphine makes you feel perfectly healthy. Olympian healthy. Healthier than I’ve ever felt in my life. Like I could run 100 miles without breaking a sweat—I could, but I’ll just lie here radiating chemical health instead as my body falls apart.

There’s a sense of betrayal. What do you mean I can’t pee? The most basic function of one’s body that one never thinks about—in fact goes out of one’s way not to think about (squat-wash-wipe-leave)—suddenly consumes me. I sit there opening and closing my legs, leaning forward, kneading my stomach. I sit so long my legs go numb. Finally gasping to dear God for relief though it seems sacrilegious. But it also seems the only thing left to do. When the doctors are at a loss and even family and friends depart at night it leaves you alone—with Him. You become aware of your utter dependence and fragility. This after all was caused (“probably” say the learned doctors) by some virus that’s too small to be seen by a regular microscope and yet has the ability to leave me ravaged and yellow against the powdered sheets.

Alone-ness. That’s a big part of it. It makes you feel afraid, then strangely calm. Even when your husband grips your hand through a catheter insertion into a bladder tearing open with a liter of water, in the end you are alone. When the needles come for your spinal fluid and you have to bend bend bend as they stab deep, you are alone. At night when you wonder what your life will hold and whether you will ever walk again, you are alone.

Not to dismiss family and friends. I couldn’t have gotten through without them. There are always surprises too. People you never thought would, call and visit. People you depend upon, don’t. It’s an eye-opening experience. Mom used to say that you should try to celebrate with people in their happiness but you should always support them in times of sadness. Now I see why. Every time someone called, visited, sent an e-mail, card, flowers, prayers, it alleviated some of the darkness.

So, a few weeks out of hectic-chaotic-social-never-stopping-to- think life. Some hours of solitude to reflect, finally. Illness can be a blessing…a reminder that life is uncertain, precious, and short. That I need to hone my life, my body, spirit, and mind constantly. To reassess where I’m at and where I’m going. That I want to see God’s wide earth and live consciously and joyfully in the time He’s given me.

Too many times life has been about indulgence—getting and spending, laying waste my powers. Maybe it’s time to let that go. Learn to play the guitar, speak a new tongue. Travel. Lead a simple rich life. Cherish family, friends, and my niece’s smile. Do worthwhile work but not make work my life.

Simple, but so easy to forget.