Landscape Photographer

Tonight I took an old woman back to the oper­at­ing room because she had a bowel obstruc­tion. Two things here: One: we are built like donuts and our donut hole does not tol­er­ate a twist. Two: she had been to the OR recently for another oper­a­tion and this obstruc­tion resulted from her bowel – part of the donut “hole” we are made of, twist­ing. She called me at 6 in the morn­ing. We made it to surgery at pre­cisely 6 pm. Mov­ing one human being through the war­rens of a hos­pi­tal sys­tem is a, some­times, all day affair.

Finally she was in pre-op hold­ing and she looked at me solid and straight-faced and said: Why are we here?

The win­dow we can look through is not the whole pic­ture. It is impor­tant, but in the shad­ows around what we think we see are shad­ows with whole other worlds, maybe mean­ing­less and maybe really impor­tant, mostly dark. She, Madge, was drift­ing in and out of pain and mor­tal­ity and trust. She held my hand while I explained again what we were about to do and she only nod­ded. Consent.

While we were start­ing the oper­a­tion a nurse asked Ray, the anes­the­si­ol­o­gist, where is your daugh­ter going to col­lege next year. His answer…etc. She said, is that your choice or will you send her wher­ever will make her happy. Wise Ray: “Not my job to make her happy.” That is a pro­found truth. What you feel is what you feel, even if your name is My Son. Happy, Sad, Lonely, I don’t make you feel those things. I make you safe as I can so you can feel what­ever the next feel­ing is. Go for it. Feel it all.

My patient did well with surgery today, I hope. I don’t know. I see through a glass, darkly, I know in part, but (maybe) then I shall know, even as I am known. That is a Bible verse I remem­ber. I am always struck by the beauty of so many verses, like this one. How great to know, even as well as I am known by the person/god/entity that made me. So, she, Madge, is in the hos­pi­tal recov­er­ing and my fal­li­bil­ity is as evi­dent as her mor­tal­ity and I hope there is an inverse cor­re­la­tion between the two. To be clear: get well soon Madge.