The following is an account of my recent hospitalization at Charlotte Hungerford Hospital in Torrington, CT. Parts of it were adapted from the journal I kept while I was hospitalized.
****Warning: Trigger alert, suicide****
Tuesday, May 25
The blue sign hanging above my bed reads “Seizure Alert”. My sparse hospital room has been designed to be as non-stimulating as possible. The room has unadorned white walls and contains just two beds and two plastic bookcases. Next to my bed is a tray table – a luxury in this place. The tops of the doors are equipped with door alarms, which are triggered if the laser beam is interrupted. My toilet is made of metal instead of breakable porcelain; the bathroom mirror is a polished sheet of metal bolted to the wall behind a sturdy metal frame. My large window is protected by an impenetrable metal screen, with a one foot gap between screen and window.
I am dressed in a hospital gown and hospital underwear. Nothing on my body or in my room belongs to me. My left arm is covered in bruises from multiple blood draws. A litany of bracelets dangle from my right arm. Sticky residue from heart monitor tabs can still be found on various parts of my body. A rectangle of angry scabs, evidence that my port was recently accessed, mars my chest. The inside of my wrist has a large angry scrape that is trying to heal.
The door opens and a member of the staff peeks in to check on me. They jot something down on a clipboard and shut the door, saying nothing. I know they will return in 15 minutes to do it again.
As I slowly come awake after a miserable night, memories of how I got here run through my mind.
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I can picture the face of the policeman who found me. His stern but kind face, the lines around his eyes creased with concern. He peppered me with questions. Which pills did I take, and how many? More police cars arrive. I don’t remember seeing the ambulance pull up, but I remember being asked to try my best to stay conscious. The paramedic, a woman with her hair pulled tightly back, loaded me onto a gurney and into the ambulance. I remember looking out the back window of the ambulance.
The next thing I remember is waking up the following morning on a gurney in the crisis center of the ER. I would spend the weekend in that windowless room, mainly sleeping, crying, and desperately searching for a way to finish what I had started.
I remember repeatedly scraping at my wrist in the dark with the red spork that came with one of many meals they brought me; meals I refused to touch. Desperate to draw blood, hoping that maybe I would manage to bleed out.
I remember the heartbreak in my husband’s voice on the phone, begging me to tell him where I was so the police could find me. That heartbreak is the only reason I relented. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I have been told that he came to meet me in the ER after I first arrived, and I know he visited me the next day, after I woke up, but I don’t remember either visit.
I remember my parents. They brought me a Bible, a deck of cards, and a rhododendron flower in a styrofoam cup of water. They begged me to eat something, knowing that I hadn’t eaten since the bagel I had on my way to the doctor’s office Friday morning; the doctor’s office where I lost hope. The last in a long line of unsuccessful attempts to get a physician to actually help me.
As a show of good faith, I ate half of the banana on my otherwise untouched tray. After they left, I stared at the rhododendron and wondered if it was poisonous.
I remember the darkness.
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I climb out of bed, feeling my body protest with its familiar chorus of pain. Ankles, knees, hips, back, shoulders, neck, elbows, wrists, fingers – all screaming together in a song I know too well. It has been seven months of steadily increasing pain and exhaustion, each week harder than the previous. A shock of pain stabs through my skull. I lie back down, stunned and angry. This symptom is new.
Am I heading into a slow death spiral?
I cannot imagine my exhausted body pulling out of this vortex. The prospect of dying a long, drawn out, undignified death fills me with dread. In 2012 I watched my father-in-law fade, wither, and die from cancer whose source his doctors still hadn’t found. I helped take care of him during his last two weeks. I was with him when he took his last breath. The idea of my husband and children watching that happen to me … it terrifies me. The fear is unbearable.
Grief overtakes me.
I look at the scab on my wrist and consider ripping it off, scraping it deeper, and shoving my hand into the toilet.
Ten years ago, God gave me a promise. I was a new mother, and my chronic Lyme disease had flared up yet again. I was so exhausted, I felt unable to care for my busy toddler alone. I cried out to God in my misery, and opened my Bible. The verse my finger landed on, in the book of Joel, promised “I will repay you for the years the bugs [locusts] have eaten.”
It was meaningful to me because not only does Lyme come from a bug, but I had even nicknamed my spirochetes “bugs”. I felt strongly that God was promising me that I would have a life beyond Lyme disease. That when the time was right, I would be healed, and there would be joy and abundant life on the other side. I have clung to that promise ever since.
Remembering that promise now, I am suddenly angry. Not only have I never been healed, but for the last year and a half, I have also been battling an advanced case of breast cancer.
Overwhelmed by my anguish, I start yelling at God, out loud.
“God, if you don’t keep your promise to me, that you would repay me for the years the locusts have eaten, then I will know that you are not who you say you are!”
Silently, I add, “And then there is no reason to stay alive.”
Not 10 seconds later, there is a knock on my door. In walks a kind-looking older man in a face mask and eye shield. “Hello, my name is John, I am a hospital chaplain,” he explains. “God sent me here today to tell you that He loves you.”
I am astonished.
He goes on to tell me about his own battle with cancer, PTSD, even suicidal feelings. He tells me how glad he is that he didn’t go through with killing himself back when he wanted to, because he has known so much joy and so much life since that time. He is grateful to not have missed out on that full life. He prays with me, and I can feel the Holy Spirit. Tears stream down my face. It feels like a miracle.
God has arrived.
He hasn’t forgotten His promise to me.
A few minutes after the chaplain left, a care package arrived for me. In it are my real clothes, from home, and some books. My husband packed them up for me. There is a card. I read it, and am touched to learn it is from my good friend, Emily, who apparently drove this care package to the hospital. She and I made an attempt to keep our one-on-one Bible “chats” going through COVID, meeting outdoors with masks on until it got too cold to continue. She has enclosed two books, both with Christian themes. I start reading “Love Wins”, by Rob Bell.
Suddenly my eyes are opened to all the ways I have allowed fear to run my life.
Soon, I am opening the journal the nurses brought me, and writing. I start a list of sins I have been overlooking, and ask for help populating this list. Suddenly my list is a page long. I pray through each one.
Next I write “How can I turn away from these behaviors?” And when I put pen to paper, it flows out of me. For each sin I listed, I jot down a few ideas on how I can work to change my bad habits.
God is at work in me.
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Thursday, June 3
From that fateful Tuesday forward, I was changed. I felt like I had been dead, and suddenly raised back to life, like Lazarus. Only… who am I that God would deign to even look my way? I felt reassured that His promises are good, and He is always faithful to them. I felt loved instead of forgotten. I danced and sang for joy while quarantined in my small room. The staff allowed me to use Bluetooth headphones and listen to Christian music. I was that caged bird singing, making a joyful noise to the Lord who loved me enough to visit me right there in that 7th floor psych ward.
I started to remember myself.
Over the next few days, the results of my testing came back. My Lyme disease had returned (I had dared to hope the chemo would kill it), my thyroid was way out of range, and they had found a 1 inch mass on the bottom of my spine.
I felt the fear trying to creep back in, and prayed against it. I quickly realized it was too heavy for me to carry this burden alone, and that I wasn’t meant to. I called my parents and asked them to get to work behind the scenes. The pain in my pelvis that had been increasing over the last few months may have been caused by this mass near my tailbone. Now I needed my oncologist to figure out what to do next. After sharing my burden and receiving a wonderful prayer from my mother, I felt reassured. It was out of my hands, but it would be handled.
When my quarantine was over, I ventured out of my room. I discovered, to my surprise, that the ward was full of smart, funny, sweet, interesting people. The rest of my stay sailed by like it was a [criminally underfunded] summer camp. Forced to go without screen time, I read books, played gin rummy, engaged in deep, fulfilling discussions, attended group therapy, painted and colored pictures, played many games of Scrabble and one epic game of Star Wars Monopoly, danced, transplanted seedlings, exercised, and wrote it all down in my journal. I started to notice an unfamiliar feeling in my chest, like a bubbling fountain. I finally realized that feeling was joy.
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Yesterday I came home from the hospital. As soon as I stepped into the elevator I started crying. Partly because I was sad to leave new friends behind; partly dreading having to face the people I had hurt; partly from fear that I would fall back into old habits; partly because I couldn’t believe I was leaving that building more alive than I have felt in years, after arriving there half dead. Emotions overwhelmed me. As soon as I got outside, everything overwhelmed me. I hadn’t been out of my sterile, white hospital ward in a week and a half. Colors, smells, sounds, sunlight, riding in a car – it was all too much for me. I felt like a cat escaping from indoors for the first time. A powerful appreciation for the beauty of creation swept through me, and I felt so thankful to be alive.
As I rode home in that [perennially messy] car with my dad, I was reminded of the time he picked me up from summer hiking camp when I was 17. I had to go home early because the Lyme disease had been ravaging my body undetected for so long that I was too sick to hike. We didn’t know it at the time, but that ride marked a turning point in my life: the beginning of my life with chronic illness. Now my dad was picking me up from the hospital, and I had the sense that it might be another turning point. Only this time, I was turning back to the life God wanted for me. I now remembered who I am, and, more importantly, who God is.
When you get cancer, people love to toss around the phrase “God never gives you more than you can handle.” It seemed true. I realize now not only how wrong, but also how harmful that phrase is. It does not come from the Bible, and actually says the exact opposite of what the Bible says. Many people end up with more on their plate than they can handle, myself included. The pain, fatigue, and fear, on top of the homeschooling, momming, quarantining, meal planning, cleaning, working (barely), paying bills, etc….. it had been way more than I or anyone could have possibly handled alone. I was never meant to handle it alone.
Matthew 11:28 says:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
It would be slightly more accurate if the phrase were changed to “God never gives you more than HE can handle”, but even that isn’t quite right. I don’t believe that God gave me cancer. It would be better to just let that turn of phrase fall out of our vernacular altogether.
The road ahead will not be free of pain or sickness for me. I might never be healed, and I might never live a single day without pain. But I get to walk that road with Jesus, with my soul mate, with my 3 incredible children, with my extended family, and with my friends. I know now that I will never walk alone, and that my stubborn insistence on self-reliance was a flaw, not a virtue. I trust God enough now to want His will to be done in my life.
Wherever this life takes me, I will carry in my heart the hope God restored to me, the love He has for me, and the promises He gave me.
Thank you for reading, and may God bless you.
Post Script:
The MRI and PET scans I had the morning after emerging from the hospital came back – the spot on my spine appears to be benign. I am so relieved!
Post-Post Script:
I got to see the chaplain who turned me around again the following Tuesday. He sat down across from me and asked me how I was doing. I told him the truth: that after his visit, everything had turned around. When I relayed my story and told him how much his visit had meant to me, he put his head in his hands and cried. He told me it had been a rough day, and this was his last stop for the day. That he volunteers his time at the hospital every Tuesday – he does not get paid. I told him how strongly I felt the Holy Spirit in him, and I could tell how much it meant to him to hear that.
God used the chaplain to turn me around, and then He used me to give the chaplain the encouragement he needed after a hard day of ministering to the sick and dying. How amazing is that??