Never, Ever Give Up

Towards the end of my last blog post I surmised that perhaps I was nearing the end of this roller

coaster ride which I’ve been on for eight months or so. Well, as I’ve learned already, life doesn’t always unfold as I expect it to, nor, necessarily, as I want it to. However, as they say, “A bend in the road is not the end of the road. Unless you fail to make the turn.” So far, I’ve been able to negotiate every turn—albeit some with more gusto than others.

The last surgery on my leg in late June—the one to remove the “in transit disease” (i.e. baggage dropped off by the original nodular melanoma while making its way up to do more damage in the area of my lymph nodes)—took a lot more out of me than I had anticipated. I had hoped to be back on my feet, walking and playing golf within a few days. That’s the problem with expectations. They set you up for disappointments. But how do you live without expectations? They’re an integral part of hope. I’m not entirely sure how they all fit together, and a little fuzzy on the sequence, or being able to identify which is the cause and which is the effect, but they’re both in the mix there somehow.

“Back on my feet” did indeed happen within a few days, but playing golf did not. I could hardly walk or hobble around the block. Alas! I feared that rigor mortis was once again setting in. (Prematurely, I might add, because I was still breathing.) I was tempted to take the surgery back for a full refund because in the operating room, moments before he worked on me, I heard with my very own (somewhat sedated, I’ll admit) two ears, Dr. Granger assuring me that I’d be back at it “in no time.” Obviously we had differing perspectives on the meaning of that phrase, but I chose to interpret it as my being able to walk the golf course—two rounds a day for two weeks—when we started our vacation a couple weeks later.

In case you wonder, two weeks of our annual vacation is usually spent staying at a golf resort in the Columbia Valley in eastern BC. That means, for me, lots and lots of golf. But for Sharyn? Well, I think her metabolism just slows down. She likes to get up late, start off slow and then taper off. We’ve been doing this two week routine for many years with our friends Bruce and April who play golf with me. This is how we enjoy it.

Nonetheless, here I am, six and a bit weeks after the latest surgery and the wound from the incision and excavation (I think the medical term is excision) has almost completely healed. That section of my anatomy is almost back to normal. Although, as you can imagine, I’m not really sure what “normal” on that leg is supposed to look like any more. And at our appointment with Dr. Granger this past week he declared that from his perspective, I am cancer free. That’s music to my ears, I can assure you!

But there have been a few adventuresome turns in the road over the past few weeks. They’ve taught me some more interesting things about myself and life in general and about God’s goodness to me. Learning is always good.

One thing that I’ve learned is that there is a “just the right time” moment to have sutures removed. A visit with the surgeon two weeks after my surgery was too soon to remove the sutures. “Come see me in a week and I’ll take them out then,” said he. But we were supposed to leave for vacation in a couple days and would not be able to get back in to see him until four weeks later. “Okay then, we’ll just leave them in and remove them when you get back. But I should warn you, I’ll need to really dig for them by that time!” That sounded painful, but deferred pain is more palatable when there’s great golf to be played in the meantime. I was willing to pay the price. Or so I thought.

A week later, now already on our vacation, every now and then and without warning, I started experiencing what was later referred to by a different, really nice doctor as “suture irritation.” Now, my brave response to the pain was such that my daughter Heidi observed that I sounded like I was having a baby. Somehow the term “suture irritation” just doesn’t do justice to the level of pain I was experiencing, although likening it to the pain of childbirth may perhaps have been a little extreme. (I told you I was a wimp. I hate pain. It hurts too much.)

You can appreciate that I haven’t experienced the pain of childbirth, but I have had kidney stones a few times. On one of those occasions in the hospital many years ago, while administering morphine, the nurse, who had experienced giving birth to her babies, told me that she understood that the pain of kidney stones was as bad as that of childbirth. The only advantage of kidney stones, she commented, was that you don’t have to live with them for eighteen years! Hmmm. That helped a lot.

So while we were away on vacation we decided to find a local doctor to remove the sutures, hoping this would relieve the painful attacks. My friend Bruce, whose father taught him all there was to know about meat cutting (he was a butcher, by the way, not a surgeon) offered to remove the sutures for me. “I can do it,” he assured me. I declined the offer, mainly because of the smirk on his face. “Okay,” he said, “Suture self. But I could do it for you.”

We were able to get in to see a local doctor, who was very kind and understanding and pleasant. As she dug out the sutures she commented that this was by far the most complex suture removal she had ever done! Great. I’m in the record books again.

That was a painful experience. After a few minutes (I couldn’t watch the process, of course, because I was laying on my stomach and she was working on the back of my leg) I figured I’d endured enough pain for all five sutures. “No, that’s just the first one,” said she. Well, just four more babies to go! Okay. Just don’t push, because that wouldn’t help at all. In the end everything came out okay. I survived and am grateful I didn’t have to wait another few weeks to have them taken out. The lesson? Always wait for just the right time to have your sutures removed. And for the right person to do it.

Another turn in the road that I negotiated with limited success, took place at the end of the very first day of our two week golf vacation. I had played two great rounds of golf that day and was really looking forward to improving my score each time for the next twenty-four rounds over twelve days. But I discovered that a gimpy leg, a seven year old grandson and a basketball was not a good combination.

Thirty seconds into a little basketball game with Isaac, I stumbled and fell on my wrist. He won the game. I incurred what is technically known as an avulsion fracture of the triquetral bone. In layman’s terms, this is when there is a hyperextension of the tendon that’s attached to the little triangular shaped bone in the underside of the wrist. In this process it tears off a tiny sliver of the bone. So now I have a sports injury! Furthermore it’s the first time I’ve ever broken a bone in my own body. (It also happens to be the first time that I’ve been this old. That may be a contributing factor.)

It was the same nice doctor who told me that I would have to keep my wrist in a brace until it heals. “Let pain be your guide.” Okay, so I knew that meant I would not be playing golf for the rest of my golf vacation. I certainly didn’t see that turn coming! (Incidentally, I’m still wearing the brace and doubt that I’ll feel guided to function without it for quite a few weeks yet to come.)

Now, how could I make the best of a bad situation? I came up with a solution. Never wanting to be called a quitter, and preferring just about anything (except pain) to sitting on our deck watching golfers go by, I decided I would not give up on golf. I proceeded to play nineteen rounds of golf with one arm—two rounds each day for the rest of our time at the golf resort. I gained a reputation around the course as the one-armed, one-legged golfer with a green leg. That was a source of great mirth to many, and produced quizzical stares from others. What fun!

I learned that there really are several advantages to golfing with just one arm. Here are a few:

• It only takes half as long to warm up on the range because there’s only one arm to warm up.
• Scores become irrelevant and I can relax more. (Although, I usually only keep score to monitor my own progress, not to compete with anyone else. In case you wonder, I actually did keep score for the first few rounds, with a goal of breaking 100. Unsuccessful on the first round, I scored 98 and 96 on the next two. Then I quit keeping score.)
• My expectations are lower. When I play one-armed, it doesn’t bother me that I can’t hit the ball more than 150 yards or as accurately as I’d like to. As I said earlier, if I have no expectations then I’ll have no disappointments.
• I lose fewer golf balls because I can’t hit them as far into the bush.
• I get more swings for each dollar spent on golf, thus lowering the average cost of golf. (That makes sense only to a golfing accountant.)

My conclusion to all this is that I should never, ever give up. As I’ve said many times, there’s a silver lining behind every cloud. I often just have to open my eyes and look for it. The joy comes from realizing that it’s there, and that its existence is not dependent on my acknowledgment of it.

One evening after dinner on our deck, we saw this magnificent double rainbow against the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains. As we gazed in awe, the outer arc gradually faded away and the colors in the other intensified.

It kind of reminded me that my God is a God of hope and of new beginnings and of peace after the storm (and sometimes even during the storm). He gives strength to my weary body. He is the lifter of my soul. I like that. And I’ll rest in that.

Selah