Emerging from Fog

They came to Bethsaida. Some people brought a blind man to Jesus and begged him to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, "Can you see anything?"  And the man looked up and said, "I can see people, but they look like trees, walking." Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

-Mark 8:22-26

The past few weeks I’ve felt like the blind man after Jesus’ first laying-on-of-hands.  I’ve seen what the blind man saw: a blurry, confusing, facsimile of life.  For the blind man, that meant seeing people who, in his words “looked like trees.”  

For me, the first stage of holy healing has been equally blurry.  In the nearly three weeks since my bone marrow transplant, I, like the blind man before me, have been led away from the crowds, including the friends and family who have hoped most fervently for my healing. Like the blind man, I have strained and squinted and stared, trying to see the world as the Son of God intends for me to see it.  

In this blurry time, I’ve blinked through tears to see masked people wearing plastic blue aprons, taking their turns at helping me along the hard road of healing.  I have fuzzy memories of doctors prodding my chest and belly, listening to my lungs and my bowel sounds, flooding me with questions about how I’m feeling and what my bowel movements are like and what number (1-10) I would assign to the pain.  I have foggy recollections of nurses giving way to new nurses, shift after shift, hooking up more IV bags than I can count.  

I remember with blessed indistinctness the moments the pneumonia had me groaning and writhing in the bed, begging for someone to take away the pain.  The pain was a 9+ for a few hours, finally giving way to the pain meds that the doctors kept having to bump up and up and up some more.  In fact, just this morning our wonderful nurse practitioner laughingly recalled me praying a prayer of thanksgiving for narcotics!  (A prayer, incidentally, I have only the vaguest memory of praying!) 

When there hasn’t been high drama, there has been an incessant sameness to the days.  Vitals, Rounds, Blood Tests, Reruns on TV.  All of the routine has only increased the blur factor. But all the while, I am convinced that like the blind man before me, a faithful Companion has not only waited with me for clarity to come, but worked actively to help bring it about.  

In the last few days, my temperatures have begun to settle and the fog has begun to lift.  I remember with startling clarity the moment in the predawn dark when the nurse entered my room to announce that my neutrophils (immune cells) had reached the magic number of 500--engraftment had almost certainly begun! In the days since, that number has climbed beyond 1000, and my discharge from the hospital is now imminent.  

And like the blind man before me, I feel the hands of a Healer, hands which have refused to release me in the semi-darkness of confusion.  Instead, the Healer has held me until clarity has come.  And as I depart this place, like the blind man before me, I know that the healing I have received may only be for a time--but what a glorious time!! I now see the road before me as I’ve never seen it, as a place where even deeply needy bodies and souls like mine receive another ways to walk, and the light necessary to walk it.