What sort of world is this?

My boss shut the exam room door quietly and looked at me.

            "His dad died recently, I mean really recently, of Carcinoid Cancer.

            And this guy is 24 and has all the symptoms of Carcinoid Cancer."

He set his computer on the counter. I waited as he absent-mindedly typed out his report. It took a few minutes before he looked up again, his normally confident, cheerful face filled with deep sadness.

            “The labs are all positive.
            He doesn’t want to go through what his dad went through...

            He’ll commit suicide.”

Pausing, he looked down and tried to keep his composure.

Then two tears rolled down his cheeks,

            “He’s so young and so smart.

            I wish... I wish he could go into the medical field.”

Anguish washed over me.

For death has come up into our windows;

it has entered our palaces,

cutting off the children from the streets

and the young men from the squares. (Jeremiah 9:21)

That night I dressed in scrubs and clocked in at the nursing home.

I fed a woman pureed birthday cake.

It was her one hundred and second birthday.

I chided and consoled my elderly residents throughout dinner.

One wanted to eat her napkin.

One whimpered because she missed her daughter.

One didn’t know who she was.

One kissed my hand every time I passed.

One shouted obscenities at illusions.

One perpetually hummed a tune.

One demanded the time every five minutes.

Lifting an elderly man from his wheelchair to his bed, I remembered the young man’s hollow cheeks and lifeless gaze as I handed him his invoice.

Such a change from when I had checked him in, when his twinkling eyes and flirtatious comments had impelled me to hurry through height, weight, and vital signs.

What sort of world is this?

Where young men die before proving their intelligence, and old men outlive their wits?

I guess it’s a fallen sort of world.

We just need Jesus… desperately.

He will swallow up death forever;

and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,

and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,

for the Lord has spoken. (Isaiah 25:8)

Welcome to reality

In the parking lot, the idea of riding an automatic wheel chair had made me hobble faster toward the entrance; I was so excited to finally ride the previously forbidden chair. 

Halfway to the back of the store my happiness sagged from the weight of my inability.

At full-throttle the chair went 4 miles per hour.

As soon as my thumb rested, the dumb thing immediately stopped.

The people behind joined in the abrupt stop, but, realizing they were breaking the politeness rule about staring, went on their way.

The chair had a safety back up beeper so people wouldn’t get run over; however, it was so high pitched that, whenever I reversed, everyone in the store peaked down my aisle.

After the stares dissolved my glee, all I had left was a puddle of self-consciousness.

I tried to round a corner that wasn’t round.

More stares.

Lovely.
Not.

I agree with Owl City: "Reality is a lovely place, but I wouldn't want to live there."

For people that worship idols and themselves...

I wrote this a while back (December of 2009 to be precise).

It's a good reminder for me.

“Ok. Peter, could you start? And John, maybe you could finish.”

The kids sprawling across the floor sat up.

Everyone bowed their heads as Peter’s deep voice started, “Dear God...”

Peter prayed for his family of six, for the relatives’ safe traveling, for the bible study.

A few people in the room nodded as he talked.

The veterinarian, Brad, prayed for a church member, for biblical understanding, for his girls.

Mr.Tery prayed for safe traveling.

Brad’s wife prayed for a church member going through a surgery and for home schooling.

Then everyone grinned, a few chuckles were suppressed.

A small voice prayed earnestly to his Father in Heaven:

“Dear God,

I pray for people that worship idols and themselves; I pray that they would just turn to you, Lord.

            Amen.”

The ‘popcorn-prayers’ continued... but in a different spirit.

Each person in the study felt a thankfulness in their hearts.

Every Sunday night, they heard him pray that simple prayer for those who worship idols and themselves.

This seven year-old boy is a zealot for legos and submarines, cake and terrorizing sisters.

He is very intelligent with an eternity of questions.

If his dad said something was right, he would believe every word and hold fast until kingdom come.

During our normal hang-nail/working late/dead cell phone/dirty dishes day, who thinks of people worshiping idols and themselves?

This sweet boy has always been faithful to pray for those people; reminding us of the world next door, in the supermarket, down the street, across the ocean.

The study group continued their prayers with a fresh zest for God because they heard a small boy pray.

A Human Without Skin

The stench of formaldehyde made my nostrils tingle, my stomach constrict. No matter how much Vick’s Vaporub I smeared around my nose, the smell triggering my brain that there was a dead body in the room would not, could not, dissipate.

                    

The comfortable Dr.Bill rambled on about respect for the dead body, while the students shifted their feet and swallowed dry throats. We can do this. We volunteered to come. We’re freaking anatomy students. This is our field. Why should this bother us? No one wanted to be the one to faint at the sight of a dead body. As they wheeled the body out, we fanned out around the room. Some students blanched at the sight of the cold, plastic body bag. This was real. The pretty pre-vet student moved behind the lab counter. Her frightened eyes met mine. Jonathan cleared his throat and smiled shakily at me. He whispered under the droning professor’s voice, “If you throw up, face the wall.” I smirked, “Yeah, well, if you need someone to catch you when you fall, come stand by me.” The students standing nearest grinned. A few shifted away from us using exaggerated movements. I forced a frown and pretended to pay attention to Dr.Bill lecturing about past irreverent students. Our recalled camaraderie drained the tension permeating the room.

We clustered around the glove boxes, politely pushing through twelve warm bodies to pull on stretchy, pink gloves. A few giggles at Jonathan, who was the only boy. A few ripped gloves. And a few minutes later, we again fanned out to our respective standing areas on the tile floor.

The gloves gave the students a false sense of protection and security.

Dr.Bill had to wait a moment for the tittering among them to quiet before he rattled off something important, and began to unzip the bag.

Not even the smell of formaldehyde growing stronger could distract me. I focused on looking into the open bag. Another layer. Ugh. Why did they wrap it in white cloths? Banning the word ‘mummy’ from my mind, I leaned forward.

Keep a cool head.

Don’t lock your knees.

Breathe through your mouth.

Look for what you know.

Dr.Bill exposed a sliver of the human body. I suppressed a flinch, and forced myself to stare and think logically.

Vastus medialis. Gracilis. Patella. Adductor longus. Where were the origins?

The whole body lay exposed on the table. My tentativeness warped into curiosity, which then morphed into awe. In my new confidence, I walked around the table near the head. I could see the whole human. That’s what it was. A human. A human lived and died in this shell. A human bumped her shin on a coffee table in this. A human took pride in this.

And this served her well.

This carried her soul for more than eighty years.

When this touched the coffee table, this sent a message from a touch receptor in her shin to its own dorsal nerve ganglia where the message was pushed up her spinal cord to the medulla oblongata. The message crossed over fibers through the mid-brain to the thalamus. Before a split-second had passed, another synapse was projected out to an area near the surface of the cerebral cortex called the postcentral gyrus.

This body then probably jumped as she yelped in pain.

She could not separate this dried out carcass from herself.

This was her.

But she died.

Now what was it?

A body.

Nothing more than a bundle of muscles, adipose tissue, and organs.

The urge to take this apart, to figure out what was going on inside us, to learn why we feel the way we do, to know where our food goes, to know how we breathe, to know what our muscles look like, suddenly consumed me. The annoying hours I spent in Dr.Kirkley’s lectures didn’t seem half so bothersome as I tried to remember what he said.

I hesitantly pointed out a few leg muscles to Dr.Bill.

He smiled warmly, encouraging me to continue.

I rattled off some more, but got stumped on the forearm muscles.

He accepted it as a challenge to quiz us on the muscles.

We crowded closer to the table, only a couple hanging back.

The chest was lifted, and 18 hands explored the heart chambers and lung cavity. Same for the diaphragm. The small intestines were pulled out and examined. She had a hysterectomy. Hidden spleen and liver were poked. Muscles were identified. She had a pacemaker. Lungs were passed around. Never mind manners, we needed to learn.

Our desire for knowledge surpassed our fear of the unknown, our fear of a human without skin.