Is insanity the insistence on meaning?

Somewhere, I read a line in a book or a poem that goes, "Insanity is the insistence on meaning."
I've don't remember the context of the line, so I can't say what the author meant by it.
But it struck a chord with me - maybe never so much as this week.

Life changes fast. If you've been living a sheltered life and didn't realize that before, certainly you understand it now - from terrorists setting off bombs at the Boston Marathon to an exploding factory that nearly levels an entire town in Texas.

One minute you're about to finish running what you thought would be one of the toughest challenges of your life, and the next you find out just what "tough" really means.

Or maybe you're sitting down to dinner with the family, just another quiet day in rural Texas, when you hear a noise and the ground starts to shake and the walls start to come apart and your world collapses - literally - around you.

The world is a scary place. It is a fact of life that none of us are as safe as we think we are.

You know that. You have your stories. Maybe you know mine.

One year ago  early on the morning of April 21, I saw my wife off to the airport, settled back to watch some TV because I couldn't go back to sleep, and was completely unaware that life, as I had known it, was coming to an end.

I remember watching a policeman walking through my back yard, meeting him as knocked on my bedroom window, hearing him tell me I needed to get to UAB Emergency as quickly as I could because there had been an accident ...

This day, one year later, was supposed to be a magical date for me. Everyone said in a year, everything would be fine.
They were wrong.

A year ago, I was worried about getting my kids summer internships that would be meaningful. MG and I were making plans for vacation, things to do before the next school year started. There were bills to pay and expenses to plan for and sports and friends and family concerns.

It was what we knew as "life."

All those things are still part of our lives.  But we've added new worries: doctors and physical therapists and when to schedule the next surgery; trying to find chairs that MG can be comfortable sitting up in, even if just for a little while; searching for a car that MG might be comfortable in for trips that take longer than 30 minutes; rethinking what to do on vacation, because the long walks where we explored new cities or mountains or beaches are now out of the question.

This is the new 'normal' for us, and yes, it's enough to drive you crazy. I'm considered a pretty emotionally stable person. People who don't know me as well as my wife does say I'm laid back, that I don't get too high or too low.
Yet this last year has been, at times, rather insane. I think of things for us to do and then realize we can't. I say things - "normal" things - to MG like, "what have you been doing?" and then instantly regret it, because what she has been doing is so limited, compared to the old days when that question might have brought forth a hundred different answers because every day could be so different.

Yes, a person can go crazy trying to figure out "why" this happened, or focusing on "what if" because a split second in time would have changed everything, or believing there is good that can come from even the worst circumstances and then worrying about somehow missing the "good" completely because you were focused on the wrong thing.

Meaning? I absolutely believe - know in my very soul - that life has purpose. But my faith is not one of arrogance. Sometimes I think it's born of necessity, because the alternative seems too terrible to face.

 We live in a world of good and evil, and sometimes I think the only thing we can be sure of is that some days we see more of one than the other.
And through this last year - through this last week - we've seen good overcoming evil. We see the people who run to danger to help others; we've seen friends put their own lives on hold to care; we've witnessed people standing up in support of total strangers; we've watched people reach out across great distances because something inside them compels them to bring comfort where they can.

We've seen, I believe, a glimpse of Eden, of life the way we were "meant" to live.
Oh, the pain, the loss, the suffering, the injustice and unfairness doesn't go away. The Scripture I read teaches me that we live in a fallen world and that nature itself is groaning, longing to be restored to the way it was created. And like the very earth we live on, we humans long for perfection too. Weeks like this past one, years like this last one, the glimpses I get of earthly perfection only make me long for that perfect place even more.

So, yes, I'm Homesick for Eden. I yearn to return to that place I've never known. Deep is the need to go back to the Garden, to a place where I'm convinced we were created to live, a place that, deep down, we instinctively know is Home.

Is truth relative to action?

Recently, I was reading a book and came across one of those things that drives me crazy.
A guy was talking about why he was not a Christian, and his reason was "at the end of the day, the Christian church has no coherent answer for earth care. And for that reason I now know I could never be a Christian."

Now, I can accept people choosing not to be a Christian (I do believe in free will, after all). I can respect and accept people whose faith - and it is faith - says there is no God, or there is a God but he doesn't care about how you worship Him, or there is a God but he simply set the world in motion and has better things to do than care about us puny individuals.
I can accept people who believe that I'm wrong in my understanding of God, who believe in Allah or Buddha or whatever they call their deity - or people who take an ' all of the above' approach.
I can even accept people whose faith says there is nothing there.
What I have a hard time accepting is people who decide they don't believe in something simply because they don't see followers of that "something" agreeing with their particular point of view.
Isn't that like saying "I don't believe in math because all the mathematicians I know can't take a joke?"
Or "I don't believe in medicine because I some doctors have killed people?"
Don't get me wrong: I do understand that the behavior of the people who profess to follow a certain 'truth' does indeed affect non-believers. That's why it is a great responsibility to try to live in a way that attracts, not repels people. After all, Peter (in 1 Peter) did write that we're to live a life among non-believers in such a way that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they see your good deeds (Chapter 2, verse 12).

But you can't please everybody. All believers have flaws, whether it's people who call themselves Christians or mathematicians or doctors or followers of Islam or the people who believe in the power of crystals (as opposed to the power of Krystals, which I do happen to believe in).

It seems to me that if something is the truth, then that should be all that matters. If two plus two equals four, then the fact that the person teaching me that may have no sense of humor, wears a plastic pocket protector, and is just disagreeable can't change the essential truth that two plus two does indeed equal four.
If Allah is indeed God, then all the bombs and oppression of women and rejection of human rights in the world can't change that.
And if Christianity is right, then the fact that the church has not taken a strong enough position on - in the above case - the environment to suit some people can't change that.

I wonder if we, as a society or culture, have become so high-maintenance that "truth" has to cater to our most deeply held interests. How did we come to be people who just reject anything that doesn't reflect our own personal interest (from the ecology to on-line gaming) because it doesn't reinforce what I want?

I blame cable TV.
There was a time when you got three channels, plus PBS that always came in a bit fuzzy. You watched what the networks gave you to watch, or you didn't watch at all. And it was amazing how often you learned to like a certain show because there was nothing else on, or you were educated about some topic because that show was the least objectionable on TV at the time.
But then came cable, and suddenly if one network wasn't giving you what you wanted to watch, you could scan 999 channels to find the network that did - even if it was a re-run of an old show.
Then came VCRs and "On Demand." If a new show doesn't appeal to you in the first five or ten minutes, you don't have to give it a chance; you simply find something else to watch during that time slot.

I fear that's how we've begun to approach all of life. If we hear something that we don't like, we change the channel to dial in to find whatever "truth" pleases us.
In so doing, we risk not hearing what really is true.
And simply not knowing.

If you don't believe something, make sure it's because you honestly don't believe it to be true, not just because it's not what you want to hear.

A year later: we're just not at the end

I can't tell you how much I appreciate the attention these little blogs got a year ago, while my family was going through what has proven to be a life-changing accident.
My blog started before that, after I left a life of journalism that I never dreamed I'd leave. My oldest brother told me I needed to keep writing, just to stay in the habit, so I did this not for anyone else to read but for me.
Of course, having spent most of my life writing for publication, I did want to be read. Every writer has an ego, and I'm no exception.
Then came the accident. Almost a year ago - April 21, 2012.
It's funny, how things happen. Someone suggested that I do one of those Caring Bridge posts, but - and I hope this doesn't offend anyone - to me that's what you did when things are terminal. I absolutely refused to believe MG would not bounce back and return to normal.
However, I also knew we are both from large families and have been blessed to have many, many friends who are scattered all over the world. I needed a way to communicate with them easily and efficiently. So I took my "Homesick for Eden" blog and turned a large part of it into chronicling "the accident."
The numbers piled up as people found and read this story. We were amazed. I know our story is not unique, and that many of you have gone through much more difficult times and handled those times with more grace and courage than I have. The only way I can explain it is that maybe my telling of our tale connected somehow. I was encouraged by people- men,  in particular - who wrote me encouraging notes and included messages like, "What you are saying is exactly how I felt when we went through our situation, but I didn't know how to say it."

I had hoped that by this time, I'd be able to put the finishing touches on this story. I just knew that, a year later, MG would be back to normal - working again at Christian Service Mission, wearing her high heels, spending days with me at the coast, working in the yard at home, doing all those things she did before April 21 of last year.
On the day of the accident, two of Mountain Brook's finest came by the hospital to see me. They wanted to know how MG was doing before they filed charges against the man that hit her. They honestly believed it would end up being manslaughter, because there was no way they could see MG surviving.
Me? It never occurred to me she would not survive. I remember calling the kids and saying, "Mom was in a wreck. It's bad, but she's going to be OK. Don't feel like you need to come home if you want to stay at school." That was stupid of me, and fortunately my kids understood it was serious and did come home right away to see their Mom and support their Dad who was in denial.
To all of you who came to see MG when she was in the coma, I apologize for sounding like an idiot. I remember walking down the hall with her family and friends and sternly - the only word I can think of - telling them, "When we go in this room, I only want positive conversation. I don't want any crying, I don't want anyone talking about how bad things look. We're going to assume MG can hear what we're saying, and we're going to be happy!"
All of them went along with me. I appreciate that. Some of them took one look at MG and had to step outside to regain their composure, but they all followed my silly demand.
Again, all I can say is that it was how I was able to handle this situation. I refused to believe MG would not be part of my life for many, many years to come.

I don't know if I've ever talked about the week before the accident. It was MG's 50th birthday. She wanted it to be special. I took a week off from work. Her birthday, if I remember, fell on Easter weekend and we (MG, SaraBeth, Grayson and I; Roecker was still a "knob" at The Citadel) went to Memphis to see her Dad. We took SaraBeth back to school in Greenville, SC. We took a day trip to Ashville and toured The Biltmore Estates, with breakfast at the fanciest McDonald's (there was a grand player piano in the dining room!). We went to Charleston and toured the coast, got kicked off a golf course, ate great seafood, had the kids come in to see Roecker's "Recognition Day'' at The Citadel. We had a great week; one of the greatest of many great weeks I have been blessed to share with MG.
It was, I hoped, everything she wanted for her 50th birthday celebration.

A week later, she was trying to get to St. Louis to see her oldest brother be baptized. It was going to be very special for her. She never made it, because on her way to the airport that Saturday morning a guy who'd spent the night before celebrating his brother's birthday and drinking way too much came blowing through a red light in a Chevy Tahoe, hitting the car MG was driving square on the driver's side door.
It only occurs to me as I write this now how two birthday celebrations were so tragically connected.

A year later, our lives have changed so dramatically. So many of our plans now seem like fairy tales from another time and another place.

And yet ...

My life has been so blessed. Charmed, almost. Not that everything has gone the way I wanted, or that everything has gone 'right.' But I've been protected from so much. And I have always known I didn't deserve it, that it was just the Grace of God and perhaps the prayers of my parents over me when I was growing up.
Some of you suggested I put this all in a book. I don't know that it's appropriate, but I did hope this spring, on the one year anniversary, I could put a final chapter on this saga; wrap it up in a nice bow.
I never imagined we'd still be dealing with this, still going through surgeries, trying to figure out how to go forward with new challenges and how to turn them into opportunities.

The simple fact is, this is real life, and most of us know real life doesn't wrap up so neatly.
One of my favorite quotes is from the beginning of the movie, "Brian's Song" (the original). The narrator says, "Ernest Hemingway once said, 'All true stories end in death.' Well, this is a true story."

I guess the point is that we - MG and I - are not at the end of the story yet. She came really close; closer than I care to admit. And there were times when MG wondered out loud why God didn't just "take her home,'' to end her pain and suffering and put her in that place where God wipes away all our tears.
Selfishly, I'm happy the story continues.
I saw a movie recently, one of those Bollywood productions from India, in which one of the central characters had a saying that I really liked. It went something like::
"Everything will work out in the end. And if it doesn't, then you're just not at the end."

I like that.
We're just not at the end.

Familiar territory: back in the waiting room

So here I am, back in a hospital surgery waiting room.

A quick update: almost a year after MG's accident, we're getting ready to head into another series of surgeries. This time, however, it's not so much life or death as it is quality of life.

Old  joke: what's the difference between God and a surgeon?
God knows he's not a surgeon.

Over the last year, we've dealt with a lot of doctors and surgeons. I suppose it's human nature to just assume all doctors know all the same stuff. Yet I know car mechanics know all the same basic stuff, too, and recognize the difference between a good mechanic and a not-so-good mechanic. I strive to find the good ones to work on my car.
The same is true with doctors/surgeons. The same is true with all of our professions. Most of us are competent in what we do. Some of us are better than competent; some are brilliant. Unfortunately, not all human beings are created equal in that sense.
We've been fortunate to have access to some brilliant doctors
 - the trauma surgeon at UAB, Dr. Melton, that saved MG's life, taking care of the multiple internal injuries that included two punctured lungs, a lacerated liver, and ruptured spleen;
- and the trauma orthopedic surgeon who put her pelvis back together, Dr. Lowe, who continues to guide us through the orthopedic recovery issues.
Are they arrogant? Maybe; they certainly have reason to be.
Now we'll find out about this new doctor we're dealing with, Dr. Susan Mackinnon. I have a feeling she's earned her arrogance, too.
I will say this in her favor: she liked my boots.
I mean, how can you not trust a doctor who stops in the middle of an examination of the nerve damage MG has suffered and says to me, "nice boots!'" (brown ostrich made from the skin of the shin, just for the record). She immediately proved to me she's a woman of taste and substance.

When it comes to MG's nerve damage, after a few tests several months apart we were told to accept it as it is, that it's pretty much just the way it's going to be. She has drop foot, very little control. The longer we go without improvement, the worse our odds for seeing any improvement.
That's what we were told, and I was ready to accept it.
Fortunately, MG was not. And during one of her many days of lying flat on her back or nights when she couldn't sleep, she did what anyone in the 21st Century would do: went to the internet.
MG found this doctor in St. Louis, Susan Mackinnon. Her biography says she "is the Sydney M. Jr. and Robert H. Shoenberg Professor and chief of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. She performed the first nerve transplant in 1988 and is considered a leading expert in the field of peripheral nerve surgery. ... In addition to her work in nerve transplantation, Mackinnon has developed a number of nerve transfer techniques in which healthy nerves are rerouted into areas left paralyzed by damaged ones ..."

Never the shy, reticent type, MG got in touch with Dr. Mackinnon's clinic at the Washington University Medical Center in St. Louis, and they asked to see her medical records. Our Birmingham neurologist was gracious enough to send everything to Dr. Mackinnon's office, and shortly thereafter Dr. Mackinnon's office called and said they wanted to see MG. The appointment was set for April 4.

That brings us to yesterday, April 4. I'm not sure what our expectations were. I know mine were that maybe Dr. Mackinnon would do some tests and say she'd get back to us. As hopeful as MG was about going to see Dr. Mackinnon, once we actually got to St. Louis I could tell she was tempering her hope.
And of course, Dr. Mackinnon breezed in, followed by a few neurosurgeons who have come to learn from her (this is a teaching hospital), including one from Egypt that she referred to simply as "the Egyptian."
Basically, the good doctor looked at MG, did her assessment using her techniques she invented, and said the worst case scenario is they could do a tendon transfer and restore some control of MG's left foot; best case they would unblock the nerve blockage and see if MG couldn't return to some level of normal control.

The amazing thing was how simple the tests were that Dr. Mackinnon did. Maybe I'll go into it later, but let me just say it was so simple yet made so much sense I had to ask Dr. Mackinnon my typical question of doctors like this.
"I don't mean any disrespect, Dr. Mackinnon, but what makes you different? Why haven't we been told about this by doctors in Birmingham or anywhere else?"
Here's where the ego came in.
Dr. Mackinnon was quick to tell me she didn't mean to sound egotistical, but that next month she was getting some award as for being the most innovative surgeon in America for this year; that she had done more research into nerve repair than anyone in the world; she laid out all the government grants from more governments than just the United States to fund her research; told me why patients came to her from all over the world; why the US Government sent injured Special Ops soldiers to her instead of forcing them to use military doctors; why doctors like "the Egyptian'' came to study with her.
The Egyptian looked bemused that she referred to him as "the Egyptian." I don't think he'd been with her long enough that she remembered her name. One of the doctors in training told us he'd only been with her since Monday. (Oh, and when the Egyptian left the room, I looked: he didn't walk like an Egyptian - shout out to The Bangles).

At that point, Dr. Mackinnon said, "I have a opening tomorrow if you're ready to get started."

Let me back up. What Dr. Mackinnon believes is that there is a nerve blockage just below MG's knee. There may be two more further down the leg, but it's apparently a fairly quick and simple procedure to "decompress" the blockage. It's outpatient surgery. And there is a chance that if this point of blockage gets unblocked, the blockages further down the leg may unblock on their own.
She believes this may restore blood flow almost immediately. And that the nerve damage from the knee down to the foot can grow back much more quickly - months, if not weeks.
How quickly will we know? I don't know. In defense of our doctors in Birmingham, they told us nerve repair takes a long time, that nerves grow back at a rate of about a millimeter a day. But Dr. Mackinnon is absolutely confident that her technique can speed that up - not the rate of recovery per day, but by shortening the distance that needs to be repaired, speeding up the overall recovery rate.
She insists she does it all the time, and it works, and she knows more about nerves and nerve damage than anyone in the world.

Months ago, I wrote a blog called "Hell on heels", about MG's love of high heels and the disappointment in never wearing them again. We have never gotten rid of her heels. We put them away, in the closet, but never got rid of them. Our good friend Jerry said we were going to all get together and sit around like grown-ups and MG could put on her heels. She wouldn't be able to walk in them, but she could just sit there wearing them, for old times sake.
And now, maybe ....
I tend toward fatalism. I want good things to happen, and believe they can happen, but if you don't expect them to happen then it's so much better when they do and hurts so much less if they don't (which is probably a lie, because even as much as I tell myself "it won't happen,'' somewhere down deep inside I must believe it can happen or else why all the effort?)

Quick general update: a few weeks ago MG hurt her hip. We thought maybe she re-broke her pelvis, and her physical therapist sent her immediately to the only orthopedist she could find in his office seeing patients that afternoon. He had never seen MG's condition before, but said he thought the arthritis was so severe we're also looking at a hip replacement.
We went back to our trauma orthopod, and after a thorough new MRI, he agrees that maybe we should discuss hip replacement now. In the last few months the arthritis in MG's left hip has increased dramatically, and there is a lack of blood flow to the bone in her hip, causing that bone to die ("avascular necrosis").
 We knew MG would need a hip replacement eventually. Like most people, we thought we'd try to put it off for as long as possible. However, a friend who had a hip replacement at a relatively young age (37, I believe he told me), said he thought about putting it off as long as he could, but then realized, "If I put it off 20 years, how miserable will my life be until then? And I could get hit by a bus before that even happens. So I decided to go for quality of life now, and I'll worry about what happens when I'm 60 if I get there." That made some sense to me.
So now we're set to meet with a hip surgeon (not a really cool, "hip" surgeon who wears Nehru jackets and ascots and drinks martini's while listening to Coltrane; that, would be a "hep" surgeon) next week to evaluate where we are in that process.

Meanwhile, another old joke:
 A doctor dies and goes to heaven. St. Peter meets him at the pearly gates and checks him in. After he’s registered, St. Peter says to him, "Look at the time: you must be hungry! Heaven Cafeteria is serving lunch, why don’t you get yourself something to eat?"
The doctor goes to the cafeteria and notices the long line. He immediately cuts in at the front, only to hear loud protests. "I’m a doctor" he says, "I’m a busy man, I don’t have time to wait in line."
The others say, "You’re in heaven now, we’re all the same here, get to the back of the line and wait your turn!"
A few weeks later, waiting patiently on line for lunch, the doctor notices a man come dashing in wearing scrubs and a lab coat, stethoscope around his neck. He butts in at the head of the line and no one utters a peep. "Hey," he says to the guy in front of him, "Who does that guy think he is?"
"Oh, that’s God," says the guy, "He likes to play doctor."

I hope any doctors who read this don't mind.
I know the Great Physician.
But I also know some great physicians here, too.