I couldn’t stop saying thank you.To the ER staff, the OR people, the post op crew. To the nurses and doctors, aides and food delivery people. To my family, my friends, my partner Jamie. I couldn’t thank them enough.
I came to the Emergency Room at Cape Cod Hospital at 3:30 am with increasing abdominal pain. I was taken into surgery shortly thereafter and later found myself in the recovery room with the news that a large portion of my lower intestine had been removed. It had become twisted, and I was whisked into surgery “in the nick of time”, or so I was told. If I had waited any longer there could have been a perforation, and then I would be the victim of a literal shit show. A potential life-threatening situation.That didn’t happen, and I am now recovering from what is described as straightforward surgery.
I can’t stop saying thank you.
I am home – feeling tired, lucky and blessed. And with some confirmed, and for me profound, insights. While I recognize that there are places and situations where people don’t have access to the extraordinary care I received, a key takeaway for me is that people have a primordial need to serve others. I was well served – with competence and compassion. Yes, it was their job, but it was much more than that. I was cared for; I could tell that people wanted to do all they could to help me get better. It made me feel good, to be sure, but I could also tell that the care I was provided by so many caregivers was rewarding for them.They wanted to help. For me, through this harrowing experience, the sinews of connection between us as fellow travelers on life’s journey grew stronger.
And I am grateful.
That desire to help, that need to serve one another, is an ingredient – no, it is the critical ingredient that will get us through the crisis that we are facing in our country and the world. It doesn’t take more than six seconds to hear or read or be assaulted by forces and voices that insist we should not be connected to one another; that some people should be dismissed, demeaned, or literally tossed away. hat some of us are chosen to make it, and to hell with everyone else. I avoided a shit show in the hospital. Far too many people do not have that privilege whether it be in a hospital, or in an oppressive workplace, or an abusive family or in a culture that increasingly divides people between winners and losers.
Our need to serve others is a power. A power of connection that creates a web of healing and trust, a web that is strong and flexible enough to withstand – and overcome – those nefarious forces and voices that seek to sort and do harm. We need to claim the power of that power – and use it, for the betterment of us all.
My experience also deepened my gratitude to God, whose mysterious presence wove through the whole ordeal. As God’s presence weaves through virtually every situation with everyone. In an odd way, I am grateful that I don’t have a sense that God singled me out from the 8.28 billion people on the planet (which is the current estimate) for special treatment.That God made sure that my crisis happened near a quality hospital, rather than three nights earlier when I was staying on an island ten miles off the coast of Maine.That God arranged for an empty Emergency Room when I arrived, which was not the case the night before. hat the senior surgeon was on call that day, as opposed to a physician with less experience.
So many things lined up in my favor. In faith and in gratitude I can say that God was a part of it all. And at the same time, I resist – no I refuse, to embrace the notion that God engineered it. That God singled me out for no end of special favors. I resist this, I refuse this – because it invariably leads to the hubris, the arrogance, that God has chosen me over someone else. That I matter more. That I I can coopt God, and then literally use God to pursue my agenda.
As I am coming away from my surgery with a deeper appreciation of the human desire to serve others, I also have a growing gratitude for God’s desire to serve. I felt that. I can’t explain that. I am grateful for it. There is a temptation in virtually every religious tradition to believe that God has chosen certain groups – and people within those groups — for special treatment. This ends up being the inverse of those forces and voices that divide and demean. See? God chose me; God did not choose you. I matter and you don’t.
I don’t buy it.
I am recovering. I am resting more than I normally do. I am absorbing the extraordinary care I received – and continue to receive – with the realization that the capacity to care is not like some oil reserve that will eventually run out, but is a regenerating resource. Let’s use it. The world needs our care.
