The afternoon crawled very slowly by. Every tick of the clock seemed eternal in the dimly lit and very quiet room. She regarded her sleeping husband from her chair by his bedside. She had known he was ill. She hadn't known he was gravely ill. She had urged him to go the doctor, but hadn't pushed it much until the last few weeks. She had the idea that if he just made an appointment, the doc would see him, prescribe something and Presto he would be better. She hadn't known it would turn out like this.
Yesterday he had done what she asked and gone to the VA doctor down the street. She hadn't expected them to take him to the ER by ambulance.
He stirred in the quiet room.
She took his hand in her own and interlaced her fingers through his strong brown ones. She thought about his hands as she sat there.
Hands that had taken hers in marriage on that long ago Spring day.
Hands that had held hers as she bore the lifegiving pain of the birth of their three babies.
Hands that had cradled those babies and changed their diapers.
Hands that had worked tirelessly for thirty years to support her and their children.
She thought about a lot of things as she sat there, her mind wandering the past.
So much to be thankful for, on this, the last day of November, 2022, and the one year anniversary of the Mr.'s transplant. I had no idea while writing the above excerpt from my personal journal whether he would live or die. I feared the worst, and as the year wore on, my worst fears were on the verge of being confirmed. The liver Dr. wore a pensive look when he would visit the Mr. in his hospital bed, which was often in 2021. You MUST get a transplant! He would say, in his middle Eastern accent. One of these days we will not be able to help you. Did he not understand that our hands were tied? The VA had told us that the Mr. could get a transplant...but the waiting time to get on the list was six months. Six. very long. months. As the year went on the urgings of the doctor became more dire. He would leave the room after a visit and all would be ominously quiet. The Mr. would look anywhere but me. The walls, out the window. I would fumble in my purse for my ATM card so I could make the excuse that I was hungry and get out of the room as fast as I could. Neither of us wanted to break down in front of the other. But as soon as I exited the room the tears would begin to flow. By the time I would make it to the elevator, the dam would break. By the time I got to the cafeteria I was a sobbing mess. I would make my selection, pay for it, make my way back to the elevator and then begin the task of controlling myself once more. By the time I would get back to the room the tears would absent, although it would be obvious to anyone within a hundred feet that there had been a storm. Circles under my eyes and tear tracks would tell the story. I loved that Dr. because he would shoot us straight. I hated that Dr. because he would shoot us straight. He never minced words or beat around the bush. And he is a huge part of the reason that we are celebrating this evening. He personally got involved with the VA, urging them to bypass the last few weeks the Mr. was required to wait to get on the transplant list.
And they did. Within a couple of weeks they had him in the hospital for the workups, just to make sure he could handle the 7 or 8 hour ordeal his body would be put through. I got a book to read with all the details. One of the first things I read was that being on the list was no guarantee you would get an organ. It could be five months to five years for one to become available. For one to become available meant that someone would have to die. This was always in the back of our minds. It was never something to take lightly or frivolously. We always understood the gravity of the situation and never took it for granted.
In the end it was only five days. We had just come back from Thanksgiving at my Dad's. We were laying around in the hotel room doing not much. The Houston liver docs had told us we weren't leaving there without a liver. We had no idea how long we would be there and were prepared for a long stay. The kids were holding things down at our house. My dad was taking care of our dog. We were just waiting. Kind of in limbo. It was quiet, with just the two of us. The Mr. was watching TV in the other room. I was sitting at the table with a paint by number, to pass the time. Then the phone rang, and in one minute everything changed. Stillness was replaced with furious activity as we ran around getting things together, packing a bag, grabbing keys. Then we were on our way to the hospital, where he would be admitted to the ICU. He received his new liver two days later, after a couple of small hiccups. They told us at a later follow up that things don't always go as smooth as it did with the Mr. They had one man that got the call for a new liver 7 different times and he never was able to have the surgery. One of those times was simply because the helicopter could not land in bad weather to pick up the organ up. The man ultimately passed away. As I stated earlier, we realized the gravity of the situation and we were grateful that everything aligned so perfectly for him. Ten days later they released him from the hospital back to the hotel. His recovery was nothing short of amazing. The transplant doctor, Dr. Cotton, called it a miracle.
One year to the day since his transplant. 365 days of watching God take a dead man and bring him back to life. I will never stop talking about it. I will never shut up about it. I will repeat it Ad Nauseam. God is GOOD. His love and mercies are never ending.
Every day I wake up, look out over my garden (I love being HOME after all the time spent away) and breathe in God's goodness. I am so glad to be alive. Then I look at the Mr. and I am doubly glad he is alive. Together we are determined to happily serve God for the rest of our lives.
One day, early in his illness, I left the hospital room and came out to the car. The Mr. was having a procedure I couldn't be there for. I was just standing there, looking lost. I had been crying, I think. I had just done some googling on the Mr.'s condition and I was in a stunned state of mind. It was the day I realized that, unless there was an intervention, he was certainly going to die, and it would be soon. A lady approached me. She must have seen how lost looking I was. She asked if she could pray with me. I said, of course. We talked. I tremulously told her what I had just read. She prayed that he would live forty or fifty more years.
I went back in the hospital, much encouraged. I never saw her again.
Fast forward nine months to a couple of weeks after the transplant. The Mr. had some stomach pain and had to go back in the hospital for a night. Dr. Cotton stopped by to talk. I can't remember a thing he said the whole time he was there. However one thing he said is burned into my memory forever. You have a good liver. You could live forty or fifty more years with this liver. I almost fell off my seat when he said that. He couldn't have known. But God sure did. I know nothing is guaranteed. Not even the next minute. But the possibility, which wasn't there before is that he could live a long healthy life and be a happy old man.
He sleeps while I write, tired to the bone after a day of Christmas shopping. I breathe a prayer of gratefulness. So much gratefulness for this time we wouldn't have had.
Best decision I have ever made in my life. Giving my heart to God when I was a child. He has taken me through many floods, fires, and storms. As long as I keep my eyes on Him I emerge victorious from all these things. I urge anyone reading to do the same. Life is never the same once you give your heart to God, hook, line, and sinker. Life is fuller, richer, deeper. Better by far, even when things go awry. It's an amazing thing to have a captain controlling the ship when the waves and wind are out of control. He brings a stability that would be impossible otherwise. I have never. Not one time. Ever. regretted asking Jesus to be the Lord of my life.
Second best decision was to marry the man. I didn't think so for a lot of years. I wondered what I had gotten myself into, and I know he did too. Marriage ain't easy. And it isn't for the faint of heart. But somehow, here we find ourselves, after almost thirty one years, still hanging together. Not only are there no regrets, I am really happy. All the years I kept asking God if I could get a divorce. He kept saying NO. I'm glad.
In an odd twist of fate, he had to take me to the hospital the other day. I went out to the car to get something out of the trunk and tripped on the old cobblestone driveway in the dark. I knew it was bad the minute my knees hit the ground. I was stunned for a second, then called out. Ally came out, and he was close behind. When we got to the hospital for x rays, he got to sit on the sidelines for a change. I had to take the bed and get the jab and the ever annoying arm cuff. After just one hour of laying in that bed I had had enough. I can't imagine how it must have been for him after nine months of it. He was in a good mood, happy to be chatting with all the familiar doctors, who remembered him and marveled over how well he looked. After the diagnosis of not broken, just a sprain he drove me home and helped me to bed. Such is marriage. Such is life.
Life looks good on you, Baby.
Thank you, Jesus.
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