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| As I was getting wheeled to see my doctor I was trying to organize the list of health problems. I didn't want to leave anything out.
My physical therapy sessions ended but I had begun feeling weaker. To me it didn't make sense. I meant that since I'd been doing physical therapy for over a month, I'd know that my health should be getting better. But it wasn't. I'd lost my ability to walk. It just didn't make sense. The doctor would give me medication. It'd take the pain away. (Or was I even thinking straight? I hadn't been sleeping since I got back from China. This wasn't normal.) She'd tell me that I'd need rest. A month or two of rest. Then I could go back to my normal life. As I was explaining to the doctor how I'd got into this predicament, I told her how important it was for me to get back on my feet within the next month or two. I wanted to go back out, maybe go back to school or work. China was done. But I was ready for the next stage of life. As soon as I get over this bump I'd be free.
"I need to do a biopsy on that growth," the doctor told me.
"Oh that?! I'm not sure what that is, but I don't think thats important," I replied. "I'd just like to know why I can't walk anymore."
The doctor left the room and 20 minutes later returned with a team of pathologists. I'd never been so confused. "Christ, stop wasting my time." After allowing the team to take samples from my body they left the room.
The doctor returned. "Look I don't know what's going on... but I'd like to know why I can't walk. Its important to me that I'm able to get back on my feet because I need to move onto the stage of my life... this is getting ridiculous," I told the doctor.
"Ryan, I think you need to relax for the time being. I'm not sure what's going on right now," the doctor slowly said to me. "You're very sick. You might be dying."
My heart skipped a beat. I was waiting for her to say "just kidding" but she didn't. "Well, how sure are you?"
"100%. I am very sorry."
--
Its been one year since I've returned from missions. Almost a year since my diagnosis. Its strange to me. I still remember that day when I saw the doctor. I still get emotional from thinking about that day. All those plans went out the window. I wanted to throw God out the window. Maybe I did or maybe I thought I did. I tried throwing Him out the window... strange for me to think that I was stronger than God.
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| Next week will mark the one year anniversary of my return to the states. I've had to endure quite a bit. And I've probably had to go through a bit more than what the average person goes through on a daily basis. China feels distant, like a long lost memory trying to find its way back into my life. Even memories of the place has been broken and replaced with more depressing and urgent needs. China had been my joy and it hurts me thinking that I didn't get to finish what I started. I hate that. I just hate not being able to finish what I started.
As as my one year anniversary back in the states rolls around I'm wondering if I should celebrate that I'm still alive. It means a lot that God's been close to me this past year but it also scares me how alone I've felt in the past year. I can't help but to read my past journal entries and see how I was overfilled with joy before my trip to China and then to see the entries dip into a pool of emotion. I can only think of a pitcher throwing to a batter and how the ball appears to be going straight, then as the batter swings at what he believes to be a fastball, misses, realizing that the ball has "dropped off the table" - a curveball.
CS Lewis best said it:
"Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel
His claims upon you as interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be- or so it feels- welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your
need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may
as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited?"
But I am alive. And that is reason to celebrate.
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| "We're just not sure if you're going to make it. You came to us in bad health. I'm sorry but we can't let you leave. We'll do the best we can," the doctor said to me. "You have to keep hoping and not give up." The team of doctors and residents smiled at me and then left the room, leaving me with thoughts. Terrible thoughts. As I laid in bed I knew that at any moment death would seize me. I'd already been crying the previous few days, including the first night of my diagnosis. In frustration I wanted to be killed already, there was no sense in dragging on a delayed death. I was just upset and angry at God- for His non-presence and for Him to somewhat abandon me. As I laid there in my thoughts of what I was going to do, whether I would live to see my next birthday, of whether I would ever be able to go out again, of whether I would ever become a loving father, a devoted husband, an obedient child to my parents, of whether I would ever be able to live, I received a phone call.
Lying on my bed, on the verge of a lot of emotion I answered the phone, not knowing who was on the other line. "Please be God!" I thought. "Give me a reason of why I must go on!"
"Hello! This is so-and-so from the UCSD Alumni association!" The caller greeted me in a cheery tone. "We'd like to talk to you about giving to the campus and keeping education affordable to students- like you were once before! Its important to give back to the community and back to the college of where you graduated from. But first, I want to ask about how you are doing?"
"Not well," I replied. "The doctors aren't sure if I'm going to be able to live. They've kept me in the hospital for a few days already and have hooked me up to machines, just pumping medication into me. I have tubes coming in and out of my body and I lost my ability to walk." I was on the verge of crying and I couldn't help my voice from cracking. "I just don't know if I'm going to be able to see my next birthday!"
"...um... wow... um... wow... wow..." the caller continued stammering and wavering between what choice words to say and use. The cheerfulness in his voice had died out and was replaced with confusion. "...oh gee... I'm sorry!... I'm so sorry!" He paused. "I am so sorry." This time his apology felt more sincere. "I won't bother you!" The caller hung up and left me alone with my own thoughts.
I wondered about that caller. Was I one of those calls that he'd never hope to get? Did he ever think about that conversation that he had once with a dying person? I always thought I'd be able to ask about him because the alumni association used to call me non-stop on a weekly basis. I won't be able to find out though because they stopped calling me after that day.
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| The room was quiet with the only exception coming out of my "pole buddy." It sounded as if my younger cousins were blowing bubbles in their cups of milk. Being pumped into me were the vital ingredients that were capable of making me live to see my next birthday. This scene was too familiar to me. Less than one year earlier I had been in a similar room, crying with the prospects that my life would be ending within a week or two- that my goals, that my life had officially ended. It was too familiar and felt the same. But I knew it was different. This time the doctors didn't tell me that they didn't know whether I would live or not. Instead they told me that I would be going home soon, that it would be at least 5 days. The room was always quiet and one could easily hear the blasting from other TVs in the patient's room next to mine. Despite the quietness, I could never sleep well. It must had been the bed.
Peering outside my window I saw scattered people walking into and out of the hospital, unbeknownst to them that I was carefully watching them from afar. The lamp on the walkway spotlighted each individual for a brief second, as if it were their turn to be introduced to me. I could hear their introductions from the announcer in my head, "here's doctor so and so, he's saved 100+ lives" or "nurse so and so, is a loving and passionate nurse." Or maybe a family member? "Here's the wife of Mr. So and So, battling cancer for over a year. She's been supportive and has been with him every step of the way." I thought about my doctors and nurses who walked under this lamp and how they could write my name under their list of people whom they've saved and/or cared for.
I'd always wondered if people walking outside by the hospital windows thought about the people in those rooms. Are there patients like me who watch them? Or who have similar thoughts as I? Maybe some of us looked longingly at one day joining them - or rather joining the people who walked into the hospital to cheer up a fellow patient, family member or friend. Maybe some of us watch those people, wondering when our friend or family member would be showing up, to cheer us on, to encourage people like me to continue fighting, that our lives are worth fighting for- that we've touched someone's life and that our story doesn't end here, that we will continue to touch someone's life to show them the greatness of life. Or maybe someone needs to know that miracles still exist and that God's power of healing is just as strong as it was almost 2000 years ago. I wonder.
Do my friends know how dear they are to me?
What do I do, do I, do
With a love that won't, that won't sit still
Won't do what it's told
What do I do, do I, do
With a love that won't sit still
-teng
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| I laid in my bed, in my hospital gown. The clock's face stared back at me reading 7:15. It was early but I wasn't tired. I knew that in 15 minutes I would be knocked out. To me, it would feel like I'd just blinked my eyes but to my friends and family waiting outside, it would be 6 hours. 6 hours of worrying. At that point everything was out of my hands. My life, I'd been praying for healing, for restoration, to be normal.
Its been almost one year of pain. Of meeting death eerily close. Its icy cold breath in my face. Almost one year of suffering.
I'd often asked, where is God? Where is God when it hurts? But I knew. I knew that God wouldn't let me go. Everything that I'd learn about God came down to my faith - faith that God would heal me.
Yes, God will heal me. I knew it. I know it now. God does not obey the rules of death and I knew He'd heal me. My trust is in Him.
And as 7:30 rolled around, I was wheeled to my surgery room... smiling.
...anyone seeing me could say that I was smiling back at death.
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