Lord, Hear My Prayer - Part Two

I have had my echocardiogram. The news could be worse, but it's not particularly encouraging either. My EF is down from 27 to 25. That's not a huge number, but it's in the neighborhood of 8%. And it's not an encouraging trend. My cardiologist is going to put me on a medication called carvedilol. It should strengthen my heart beat and could make my EF go back up some. Another echocardiogram in about three months will tell us if it is working. To have all this happen at the beginning of Lent is somehow appropriate.

It was about two years ago at this time that I became aware of my downward trend. I began to be more and more tired at the end of the day. As the spring and summer progressed, I needed to take lasix more often to control fluid retention. But one night early in September, I woke up almost unable to breathe. I suspected congestive heart failure, so I went to the bathroom and took an extra lasix pill. Just before it kicked in, I was ready to call 911 and have them take me to the emergency room. As soon as the lasix started to work, however, the relief was immediate.

I called my cardiologist who adjusted my medications and sent me off to cardiac rehab. The nurse in charge there poured over my ECG strips after my first session and decided what she was seeing wasn't good. As she put it, "you have more irregular heart beats than you do regular ones. In one 6-second strip, I count 6 PVCs and only 4 regular beats. That gives you an effective heart rate of around 40 to 50." My cardiologist referred me to an electrophysiologist -- a cardiologist who specializes in the electrical circuitry of the heart.

After my first appointment with him toward the end of November, 2004, he said, "I have good news and bad news." Don't you just love a smart alec doctor? "The good news is that I don't think you are at any more risk for heart attack, meaning a blood clot, than most people without cardiovascular disease. All your labs and tests show that you have those risk factors under control. The bad news is that I do think you are at significant risk for sudden cardiac death. That's when something goes wrong with the electrical system and the heart either quits beating altogether or beats so ineffectively that you will die within a couple of minutes without intervention."

He had my undivided attention at that point. I'm certainly not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry either. I want to put it off until I'm called. His recommendation was to do an electrical study of my heart and then fit me with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) if he found what he expected to. I agreed to that and we scheduled the study and probable surgery for December 13. The study was done, the surgery was necessary and it was done. Until the last month or so, the results have been almost miraculous.

As I was driving home from that appointment, however, I was pretty self absorbed. The weather reflected my emotional state. The skies were dark, with a combination of rain and sleet. All the fields on the sides of the road were dark and dead. There wasn't a leaf to be seen anywhere. The tree trunks were gray and bare. It looked like death. It was the desert.

I recall saying to God something like, "If you were a gentleman about all this, you would give me a sign that things are going to be OK. I know that because of the resurrection, my ultimate fate is secure, but I have a wife and two daughters to be concerned about. And while you're at it, I don't want some subtle sign like a butterfly brushing my cheek. Something big and obvious that smacks me right between the eyes would be good. Sometimes it takes a lot for me to get it."

Shortly after that I rounded a corner in the road just south of Circleville. There off to my right were several acres of winter wheat so incredibly green that I had to stop. That field had been there on my way up, but I hadn't seen it. It had been just as green then, but I hadn't noticed it. I got out of the car and stared at the field wondering if someone had painted it. Then I walked down a short slope to the edge of the field and touched it. With that touch God was there again. The hair all over my body stood on end. I looked up and said, "OK, I get it."

Following the death of his wife, C. S. Lewis drew upon the rage and despair that had been part of his journey through grief, and wrote a short book called A Grief Observed. In the very first sentence he says, "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear." I can add that no one ever told me that fear feels so like grief.

C. S. Lewis goes on to say, "[...] 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 [...] 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 [...] and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. [...] There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?"

This is the crux of the situation -- to discern where God is in all of this. Indeed, isn't this our call throughout our lives -- to discern God, God's presence and God's will? God is present and working in everything whether we recognize it or not -- whether we even wish it or not.

So there must be some grace being given to me right now. Could it be that I am being given the grace to become what Henri Nouwen calls a "wounded healer" -- to bring healing through my Eucharistic ministry and ministry of presence to people in the hospital where I work? Nouwen says that we are called to recognize the suffering in our own hearts (an ironically appropriate metaphor in my case) and make that the beginning of our own ministries. In the image of Christ we are, to paraphrase Isaiah, to heal others by our own wounds.

If this is what is happening, it is grace indeed. And this will be a Lenten season to remember.