Two weeks ago - 6 days before Passover, to be exact - my dad was having some issues, so he went to the doctor and was told to drink a lot of water. Being the good Navy man that he is, he followed orders, but the next morning he woke up in extreme pain.
My mom drove him to the ER and en route, a huge gush of blood came out. He was admitted to the hospital and learned that as a result of the radiation he underwent for prostate cancer, he had amassed blood clots in the bladder. He got hooked up to a catheter among other things and everything flowed out into a pouch at his bedside. Every half an hour, someone would empty the bag into a bucket to dispose of the contents. It looked like A1 steak sauce. Blood was literally pouring out by the buckets.
For six days, this blood-flow continued, interrupted frequently by clots that needed to be "irrigated", a painful and delicate process of siphoning them out of the urethra. That narrow channel became like a fiber-optic highway transporting multi-lane traffic. All this is a somewhat predictable consequence ("late side-effect") of radiation, but it went on longer than "normal" so they went in to operate in effort to stop the bleeding. The operation succeeded in reducing but not in stopping the bleeding (trying to keep a good attitude, we joked that the color changed from cabernet to fruit punch, but we were still aiming for rosé). It turned out that his "sling procedure" had eroded and was causing further damage, so the doctors conferred and concluded that he needed to be transferred to MGH.
On Thursday, he managed to shave and wash up a bit, just in time to prepare for the phase ahead. He had waited two days for a bed to become available at MGH, and as soon as one opened up, he was whisked away.
Very early Friday morning (Good Friday), he was transported in an ambulance and prepared for same day surgery. I can only imagine his anticipation as he waited alone to go into surgery. My aunt came to visit but he was already gone. My mom and I came to see him but he was unreachable in the post-operating room. For hours, we wandered around the hospital, going up to his room and back down to the post-op room, anxiously waiting for him to emerge. We kept looking for him, asking the nurses when he would arrive. Where's my father? It seemed to take forever.
Finally, there he was. Yet he wasn't really there. He was as pale as the white sheets that covered him. Unable to open his eyes or to speak. Where did he go? We stood at the foot of his bed. I felt his absence. It was a terrible time.
Surely, this was a period of intense suffering. Later, he said that he was in agony. This, coming from a man who never complains. "Please take this cup of suffering away from me." (Luke 22:42)
The only thing he could say was to ask for an ice cube, one of those little medical sponges on a stick, but he wasn't allowed to drink. "I am thirsty" (John 19:28)
I believe the hardest was the suffering of body and mind. He later said that he was having nightmares and didn't know where he was. "Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say?" (John 12:27)
His body was bombarded from all angles, inside and out, with medication, anesthesia, incisions, tubes, needles, etc. He had a catheter in his side that went directly into the bladder. "One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear and immediately blood and water flowed out" (John 19:34)
That night, I was afraid. "I cried out to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy mountain. I lay down and slept, yet I woke up in safety, for the Lord was watching over me." (Psalm 3:3-5)
The next morning, he called me. His voice sounded good. He looked good. But he couldn't get up. It was more than the fact that he'd been lying down for a week and a half. He was dizzy from having lost so much blood.
Sunday (Easter) he was paler and weaker. Somehow, he managed to get up and walk around. My father got up ! He needed a blood transfusion, a scary (to me) but common and life-saving transaction. That got him going again. I watched those drops of blood going into his veins. The blood of another gave him life.
Monday night - Easter Monday, Marathon Monday - he was discharged, stable enough to go home with a visiting nurse. He came back home. Praise the Lord and...
Happy Easter!
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