Crazy Week

God always gives me what I need, no matter what I ask for. I ask for patience, and He gives me reasons to be patient. I ask for peace, and He gives me opportunities to practice being quiet. I ask for time without cancer treatment, and He shows me how far I have to go.

Tuesday I called my Nurse Practitioner (hereinafter NP) and asked about getting an MRI on the schedule, since we were approved for one and it seemed pertinent to figuring out what was wrong with my back. Later that day, scheduling called me with an appointment — a month away. The NP is part of a large hospital complex downtown, and her orders were for that system, but it appears to have a massive backlog on MRI cases. I spoke with some friends down in Norman, and they told me I should look into 3rd party MRIs around that town, as they had been able to schedule much quicker.

Wednesday morning I made some calls, and found I just needed a copy of the order, so I called the NP to get it. As we discussed my case and symptoms, she seemed to have a shift of perspective and told me I should instead come up to the major hospital near where she worked (and part of her system) and check into the ER for an emergency MRI. I tried several times to suggest just using a 3rd party in the next week, but she became quite insistent that we needed to look at this as an emergency given my symptoms.

My wife and I dropped everything and made it to the hospital by 1:00 pm Wednesday. When I told the lady at the desk what I was there for, she was not optimistic. Apparently the hospital had an MRI backlog 30-40 people deep and it was going to be a mess shoehorning me into the rotation. My wife and I waited in the lounge for hours. I received a notification around 7:15 pm that I had an MRI slot at 7:30. By the time they got an IV in my arm (after 4 tries), it was 8:00 and I was in the metal tube. My back was absolutely killing me.

We returned to the emergency waiting room and were allowed to wait in a smaller area (the same one where they’d done the IV), and it was close quarters. We had about enough room for two chairs and my walker, and we were overflowing our allotted space. They worked on finding me a bed, though I wasn’t sure yet for what. Eventually, I think it was around 11:00, they put me in a bed in the hallway. Someone mentioned a neurosurgery consultation, and presently a kind-eyed, soft spoken young female doctor came by and discussed my case. She said the hope at that point was to avoid a big back surgery and just go in to carve off a piece of tumor that was pressing on my spinal cord. I asked when this would happen and she said Saturday. She said she was admitting me and that Lisa should go home and get some rest.

I slept in the hallway that night, endured a bunch of very similar conversations with more neurosurgeons, and met with the director of the ER. She explained that she had 36 rooms and 67 beds and was still over capacity, pushing people into every nook and cranny she could find in this massive hospital complex. I stayed in the hallway through the morning and afternoon, had visits from my pastor, boss, and one of my friends, and finally secured a berth in (ironically enough) the discharge unit, a funny place to send someone on their way into the system.

Friday came after another midnight visit for a second MRI on my neck. Somewhere in there I had some X-rays as well. They had given us a warning that I might be moved up in the surgery schedule. It was just seeming as though this would not be the case when they showed up and told us they were taking me to to surgery. I was wheeled into the prep area and my friend Galen (a pastor at another church) showed up to pray with me. I told him of my commitment to God that whatever happens is the best thing that could happen because God is in control of it. We prayed over that, and then someone showed up and proceeded to tell me of the massive surgery they had planned. We were no longer looking at a tiny incision and dainty little scrapings of a tumor. I was in for a full T12-L4 spinal fusion, with an incision from my shoulder blades to my tailbone, followed by carving that tumor out with a hacksaw. Sign here and initial here. In the back of my mind, I wondered what God had in store for my BJJ career. Do people even do BJJ with spinal fusions? I reminded myself of my oath. God’s way was to put me in this surgery, and God’s way is the best way that can happen. I signed and initialed.

I am pleased to report that as the surgery team assembled around me in the OR, I was able to get their attention and rip out my favorite joke: “y’know, I used to hate cancer, but lately it’s been growing on me.” They laughed politely then knocked me out so I couldn’t bring out the followup material. I don’t remember the 5 or 6 hour surgery, but according to an update posted by my wife, I was doing really well in the middle of it. I remember hallucinating about programming in the recovery bay, then rejoining my wife and friends as they moved me to my present room. The first thing I noticed was that the awful chronic pain I’d suffered with for the past 6 months intermittently and the past 3 weeks constantly — was gone. It turned out that they had found not one but two tumors pressing on my spinal cord and that was doing all the damage on my quality of life. Of course, now I have traded for this giant incision wound doing its best to keep me humble.

I started this week with chronic pain that I figured would be slowly healed over at least a couple of months. I am ending it with that pain cured and a new kind of life in my back. I still have the cancer, and it will still eat at me, but maybe this is my ticket to the season beyond treatment that I’m asking for. I understand the oncology team is looking at doing some targeted radiation to reduce the tumor load on my spine, so there is still that to endure and write about, but for now praise God! My pain is gone and my wounds are healing!