The Surgery

Been a heck of a week. Going to make an effort to catalog everything that's taken place...

Sunday

After flying in from New York Saturday morning (NM I sales process meeting), I led worship Sunday morning. There was a weird aura in the air...something about the atmosphere just seemed a little solemn and lifeless, for some reason. I thought it was just me, at first, but then I came to find out a little later on that Vince Tam's and Shirley's grandfathers had just passed away that morning, that Joyce’s mom was going in for testing (not sure yet what the issue is), and that Ellen Cho had just gotten back from a funeral as well. Even with all this going on, all I could think about was home. With my mom's surgery coming up on Tuesday, I couldn't help but feel more and more homesick.

As far as service, everything went well - I led for the second time at TRC, and it was just me and Jason up there on a simple acoustic set (You Alone, In the Secret, We Are Hungry, Enough, How He Loves), and it actually went really smoothly. I shared some thoughts on Psalm 23 - specifically, how the passage starts out with "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want", and the irony I saw in that statement. So often, I do want - I want so many things beyond and outside of God, be it security, affirmation, encouragement...at that very point in time, what I wanted in the worst way was relief. How difficult (yet necessary) it is for me to trust in His plans for me more, and to allow Him to fulfill His role as my Shepherd and lay me down in green pastures and lead me beside quiet waters. All throughout service, though, and even in my conversations with people afterwards, everything just seemed...muted. Community and fellowship was happening around me, but I couldn't help but be preoccupied with a heavy burden that awaited me thousands of miles away.

I went home pretty quickly after service (after telling a few people here and there about my mom's situation) and packed. Took a cab to O'hare ($49...apparently Sunday's are more expensive, and I had no choice but to take a Benz, so I had to shell out more cash). It was snowing lightly, but the fog was terrible outside. I ended up waiting a painful 3 hours at my gate since my flight was delayed. I used the time to spend send out an email to friends asking for prayers for my mom and watch the 49ers lose to the Giants in the NFC championship game.

My flight left Chicago around 11:00 PM. I landed in SFO around 2:45 AM.

Monday

I got home and went straight to bed. I had little time to interact or even think about my parents; I had a call at 6:00 AM to kick off a project (Alloy campaign for #TheList). After my call, I went down to the Starbucks next to Andronico's, and parked myself at a table to work until lunchtime. Around 11:30, my dad met me there, and we drove over to Tomi Sushi in Mountain View to grab lunch. Don't remember much about that, other than me just asking him about the schedule for the following day. After that, we went home, and I finished up my work. Mom came home around 5, and we went out to eat for Chinese New Year.

Despite Tuesday's agenda obviously present in all our minds, conversation was pretty normal and light-hearted. Interactions like these over the course of the week really emphasized to me my parents' levelheadedness in not allowing the gravity of the situation to dictate their response and perspective toward it.

Seemed like none of us felt like sleeping early that night. Mom wrapped up some work emails, my dad watched TV, and I watched The Help on DVD downstairs. Great story, great movie...although it wasn't all that relevant to what was really on my mind.

Tuesday

We got to El Camino Hospital around 8 AM. We went to the waiting room on the 2nd floor, where my mom and dad were taken to a back room (I'm guessing, to discuss final logistics before she went under) while I did some work.

8:45 AM - They took us to the pre-surgery area, where we met a nurse named Kathy. Great woman - kind, wise, seemed like the type of person who just always knew how to face life's adversities with an optimistic approach and come out smiling on the other end. Immediately evident to me were her efforts to inject humor and lightheartedness into the situation. While this caught me off guard (if I want to feel a certain way towards something, I don't like other people trying to affect that), I appreciated it more and more as we talked with her. Whether deliberate or organic, Kathy's efforts to defuse the tension and anxiety reminded me that it's far more important to live for joy instead of in fear. "O death, where is your sting?" <-- that sting will take hold of me as far as I allow it to.

9:00 AM - We met the anesthesiologist (Dr. Liao), who gave us an overview of how the procedure would take place, and what methods he would use throughout the process. He then administered the IV, a nerve-wracking, painful sight for me to witness because of my mom's small veins. He then told us to sit tight and wait for Dr. Bogerty...the wait seemed like forever.

9:50 AM - Dr. Bogerty showed up. Although talking about a mile a minute, her no-nonsense attitude towards the coming proceedings gave me great assurance that she knew what she was doing, and that my mom was definitely in good hands.

10:07 AM - Dr. Liao shows up again, we asks a few last questions, and he administers the anesthesia. Mom starts fading out of consciousness immediately, taking both me and my dad by surprise. While not visibly scared, he does seem a bit shaken, squeezing in some last encouraging words to my mom in her last moments with us. And just like that, they took her away.

12:00 PM - We had about 3-4 hours to spare, but we wanted to make sure that we were back before the surgery completed, so my dad and I went to go eat at the Chinese Halal Restaurant (Dong Lai Shuen) in Cupertino/Saratoga.

My dad cried. His eyes turned red just before he started ordering, turned really red while he was speaking to the waiter...and then finally, tears began streaming down his face just as the waiter walked away. "We should have caught it sooner...should have caught it sooner," he said, his voice never wavering despite the tears and sniffling nose. Up until now, I'm still not entirely sure what he was crying about, exactly. Was he disappointed in himself that he didn't push my mom to get tested sooner? Did he think he had failed in some way? Was he nervous and anxious about the procedure, despite the optimism he'd shown in recent weeks? It was hard to tell. I was taken aback by the whole sight. I had never seen my dad cry life this before, and it was so unexpected that I did a poor job of consoling him, mustering up little else other than, "It's going to be ok, dad...don't worry, it'll be ok." What I do know, however, is that those tears really underscored to me the weight of the whole situation. It was in that moment that I recalled a conversation that I had had with Pastor Jong the day before. I had told him that I was unsure why I was home, that I didn't know what I was supposed to "do", per se. I struggled to understand what my role was in this entire thing, seeing as how I wasn't "directly" involved in the procedure.

Then, it hit me - this was why I had come home. The pain, the anxiety, the nervousness, or whatever else that had been developing underneath the surface - things that my dad was facing that could never be fully summarized via email or articulated over the phone...my "job", if you want to call it that, was to just be present. It wasn't just a numbers thing, or the fact that another person was there - it was that he needed someone to share the load with. Were he to be on his own over the course of this entire week, it would have been miserable. No one to take his mind off of things, no one to commiserate with, no one for him to love, and to love him in return...such presence was needed at a time like this. More to come on this later, as I continue to reflect and flesh out these thoughts...

2:09 PM - Upon returning to the hospital, we got an update that the surgery would take about another 30 minutes. They ended up finishing around 2:45, at which point Dr. Bogerty stopped by and told us that the surgery had gone very well. The tumor turned out to be significantly larger than they originally believed (about 8 cm in size), and thus, they needed to use a more invasive approach in order to ensure that everything was extracted properly. They had also discovered a number of other lymph nodes in the process, but we found out later that they all tested negative for cancer (praise God!).

5:00 PM – We finally got to see mom. We arrived at room 3117 to find her about as wiped out and exhausted as I’ve ever seen her. She could talk, but her speech was faint and labored. Mrs. Lee stopped by for a bit to pay her respects (she was even generous enough to give me a See’s Candies gift certificate for Chinese New Year), but left quick since my mom was in such a weakened state. Dad and I chose to let her rest for the time being, and we went to go eat at Joy Luck Place to pass the time. Mom’s younger sister called while we were eating, and my dad gave her an update on how everything had gone (she was pretty anxious to hear about mom’s status, as her own husband would be undergoing surgery for prostate cancer the following Tuesday).

After dinner, we went to Best Buy to look at computers – mom had been wanting to get a new PC for a while, so we figured we’d go browse around while we had time. While we were there, the hospital called and told us mom was awake, and asked us to come back to see her.

She was in pain, and definitely still feeling the effects of the anesthesia. It was a struggle for her to move her body at all, and her throat was parched. The nurses told us that she couldn’t drink any water, so the best we could do in the meantime was feed her ice chips. She wasn’t hungry at all. All she wanted to do was rest, but because of the discomfort she was in, all she could do was lie there helplessly. Her shoulder was hurting because they had to stretch it out while they were doing the surgery, so she asked me to massage that area for a while to try to relieve the pain a little.

9:00 PM – We finally went home. I was drained, but didn’t feel like sleeping. I ended up sending out an email update to people who had been praying for my mom and working on transposing/checking worship song chords for PJ until around 11 or 12 before finally going to bed.

Wednesday

I quickly realized how difficult the week was going to be trying to juggle work with keeping my mom company at the same time. We got there in the morning, my mom still in a significant amount of pain. She wasn’t in a good mood either, unhappy with the nurses assigned to her that first evening. Heidi, another RN, showed up in the morning, however, and she and my mom clicked almost immediately. They hit it off pretty well, and that went a long way in lifting my mom’s spirits. Heidi also turned up the epidural medication to 8 CC’s an hour, which helped a lot in easing the discomfort my mom was in.

Work was hard. The tasks/projects I had on my plate weren’t difficult, but it was difficult to focus and concentrate for uninterrupted periods of time. Every so often, a nurse or member of the hospital staff would stop by, and it was a day filled with distractions. My dad was feeling better, however, and that helped put my mind at ease a little more.

Thursday - Friday

These two days are a complete blur in my mind, mainly because they were both so packed. Mom got noticeably better over the course of these days, however, and was soon walking around, eating solid food, and back to almost-normal in a startlingly short span of time. My dad and I continuously remarked how fast the week had gone by, and how it was so difficult to recall what had exactly taken place on which day because everything had just melded together in our minds. Going to the hospital at 8/9 in the morning and staying there until 9 in the evening will do that to you.

Mom had a handful more visitors as the week went on. I don’t recall exactly when each of them stopped by, but Fan Yi a yi (James Chen’s mom), Ya Fang a yi, Andrew/Gina/Peg’s parents, Sarah’s mom, and Mrs. Lee all came through. When she had emailed close friends the night before her surgery, my mom had specifically requested that no one visit. I’m guessing part of it was not only due to privacy, but to the fact that she didn’t want to be a burden to others. With all the calls and visitors I witnessed over those few days, however, I was reminded of the extent to which people just really love my mom.

Saturday

Mom was discharged. We left the hospital grounds around 2:45 PM. God is good.

Thoughts:

There were a couple key things that my mind kept running back to over the course of the week…

1) Dad loves mom. So much. So much. They carry themselves pretty unemotionally this week, but this week, if anything, showed just how much my dad cares for her. The tears he shed, the countless time spent just sitting by her bed, the way he ordered food that she would’ve liked wherever we went to eat- all these things made me realize just how deep that affection and appreciation runs. I don’t see it very often, and their bickering sometimes throws me off a little, but he loves and cares for that woman just as much as he does for me.

2) Also related to dad…this week was another instance that made me wonder where he is exactly with his faith. I don’t know how much he cares about it, how important it is to him, or even where it falls in his list of priorities. And this made me really worry and ponder whether or not I’m living my life “loud enough”, so to speak. Am I being a good witness to him? Are my heart, my attitudes, my behavior, making any sort of impact, speaking any sort of truth or conviction into his life? With him and my mom, I struggle so much to pinpoint their motives in going to church, praying for meals, saying things like “I’ll pray for you”, etc. And it tears me apart inside that I’m such a mess in my own spiritual and personal walk too. Sigh…God, have mercy on my family.

3) I noticed in the first couple days at the hospital that anytime we came in contact with a doctor, they introduced themselves by leading with their title (i.e. “Hi, I’m Dr. _____”). However, when we met nurses, they always introduced themselves by their first name. This sparked a little curiosity in me, so I did some research on it and found something pretty interesting. Doctors introducing themselves in this manner, although a little cold and displacing, communicates a sense of authority to the patient. In some ways, it establishes that the doctor’s opinion and pedigree is to be revered, and that his skills qualify him for the task at hand. By contrast, nurses introducing themselves in a more approachable manner creates an aura of comfort and approachability (understandable, seeing as how nurses interact with patients on a significantly more intimate level than doctors do). However, upon further digging, it seems that this is a debated topic within the medical industry, with nurses sometimes struggling with their status within “hospital hierarchy”, so to speak. The lack of a title, as well as other factors like the cutesy/cartoony scrubs they wear, induces feelings of inadequacy in some cases, as some wish they received more credit and respect for what they do.

How often do I wish I were a spiritual doctor, knowing all the diagnoses and answers, getting recognition for complex heart surgery, and being respected as an authority for my expertise in this “field”. The more I think about this illustration, however, the more I’m realizing that my role in this lifetime can ever only really fall in that of a patient or nurse. I’m a patient for obvious reasons – I’m so messed up inside, so broken, that I have no choice but to acknowledge my desperate need for a Savior to heal me and patch me up…Gospel 101.

At times, however, I feel like I’ve seen cases where God calls me to be a nurse to those around me. A loved one may be struggling with a myriad of different things, and for whatever reason, chooses to confide in me with his/her struggles. But though that person may be a patient, I’m no doctor. I don’t have the tools or the know-how to try to fix him/her up. I’m not meant to. And if I try to overstep my bounds and prescribe something based on my own limited wisdom, that’s a recipe for trouble. But the Doctor never said my primary job was to fix broken people, but I think sometimes it’s as simple as loving and caring for them. In situations of painful surgery and troubling diagnoses, all I can really do is follow the Doctor’s orders. I can’t heal by myself, but I can facilitate the healing/recovery process by complementing and supporting the Doctor’s plans for each patient I come in contact with. God, teach me to be a good nurse, ever content with the role in which I’m placed (no matter how great or small). Teach me to be in tune with You, seeking to understand what you’re trying to do in each and every one of their lives. May I be a discerning nurse, sensitive to your plans to bring health and redemption to this world.