It was longer, it is shorter now. My colon, that is. Two years ago my right colon was removed. That experience of surgery, hospitalization, and months of recovery changed me. Significantly.
On the second anniversary of my semi-colon, my incision said “hello” with a sensation that got my attention. It’s not unusual for it to speak to me, especially when I’m working my abdominal muscles at the gym.
I confess I like the hellos. They remind me of love, of vulnerability & mortality, and my humanity. The hellos remind me that caring for myself is not an extra. It is an essential.
I confess I like the hellos. They remind me of the love of my wife of nearly 37-years who took time off work to cook me mashed potatoes and help me manage the infected wound area. (It required gross things). They remind me of my children who ignored me when I told them they didn’t need to come see me.
I confess I like the hellos. They remind me of my vulnerability. There was something humbling and spiritual about being dependent: by medical staff in the hospital and my beloved at home. I experienced living fully human. To suffer and depend on others is part of how we are created. We are one family.
I confess I like the hellos because surgery & recovery changed me. I no longer give lip service to self-care. I take care of myself even when it is not convenient. I know — I believe & embrace — that I am important to myself, to others, and to the one I call God. I start my day with the gym or I stop work early and lace up my running shoes. I hike in the Columbia River Gorge, the sage-marinated trails of eastern Oregon, or I hike the sacred Mt. Hood. I take rest days when my body and spirit needs them.
After two-years with a semi-colon, I am thankful for the “one permutation from cancer” growths that necessitated removal of my right colon. Though my life is still filled with personal challenges, personal mistakes, deep grief at times, I am blessed by the divine presence within creation and each of us that nudges and encourages every rock and human being to be the most loving that we are capable of becoming.
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This is the twelfth of multiple posts about my experiences of surgery and recovery following a colonoscopy and removal of my right colon.
I am healthy.
The surgery was successful, though recovery included an infection which still tingles from time to time.
I learned about vulnerability. I learned about weakness and allowing others to care for me. I learned that hospital scrambled eggs can be an orgasmic experience after more than a week of liquid diets and IVs.
I am healthy.
The surgery was successful, though recovery included an infection which still tingles from time to time.
I felt the love of my congregation, my community. I felt the love of my wife whose love manifest in our new mantra, “No more TMI.”
I cried out to God during those days! I sobbed in my wife’s arms the day the biopsy came back negative.
When a trip to the living room wore me out, I whined that I might never hike the trails of the Pacific Northwest again.
I felt the love and presence of the divine in those days as my community prayed for me. I felt the love and presence of the divine in the loving skills of medical professionals. I felt so many things, some about which I blogged and others I could barely admit to myself.
I am healthy.
The surgery was successful, though recovery included an infection which still tingles from time to time.
My journey continues. My struggle and joys continue. My gratitude for the web of divinity that connects me to every human being and every spring bud is boundless. I’ve experienced a resurrection firsthand!
One year ago today I was in surgery. I wouldn’t change a thing even if I could, especially that tingle. Amen.
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This is the eleventh of multiple posts about my experiences of surgery and recovery following a colonoscopy and removal of my right colon.
It wasn’t what I thought. It wasn’t splatter from the drinking fountain. It was perspiration that splashed off my own body onto my eyeglasses as I ran on the treadmill. Photo by Tim Graves. (Creative Commons License BY-NC-ND 3.0)
It wasn’t what I thought. It wasn’t splatter from the drinking fountain. It was perspiration that splashed off my own body onto my eyeglasses as I ran on the treadmill. Though I found this fascinating, I hesitated to share until reminded, “There’s no such thing as TMI.”
I’ve grown accustomed to sharing the exquisite details of my bodily functions. Sometimes I hesitate only to be encouraged by my wife of over thirty-five years, “There’s no such thing as TMI!”
This is what happens after you’ve had colon surgery. Nothing is sacred. No topic is off-limits. Gross is just a concept you race past in conversation. After three and one-half decades of marriage, raising two children to adulthood, and colon surgery there really is no such thing as TMI.
To be sure, my wife and I’ve always had a transparent relationship. I could never divorce her because she knows where the metaphorical body is buried. I, too, know her secrets. But the depth and detail of our intimacy expanded during the months after my right colon was removed. There is no such thing as TMI.
This is what happens when you’re beloved without condition. This is what happens when the first person you want to tell about your day, your deepest feelings, your dreams, struggles, the things of which you’re ashamed, and, yes, even that the splatter on your glasses is your own sweat. This is what happens when the divinity within another is mutually nurtured.
There’s no such thing as TMI. Nothing is sacred or, rather, everything is sacred. The sacred, the divinity within each of us, inhabits every cell in our bodies, every drop of sweat, and every emotion. It is in the TMI, that we gain intimacy with one another and God.
A cloud settles over Wind Mountain, near Home Valley , Washington. Photo by Tim Graves
I found myself with multiple feelings on the three-month anniversary of my surgery.
As I journeyed home from climbing Wind Mountain in the Columbia River Gorge, I felt a sense of accomplishment. I have made remarkable progress in the three months following the removal of my right colon. My body is not only healing, I am getting back into shape. Two and one-half weeks ago before climbing Wind Mountain, I thought I might collapse before the first switchback in my attempt to climb Dog Mountain (See Perseverance.)
Unexpectedly my thoughts turned to those-days in the hospital and recuperating at home. The surgery. The pain. The weakness. The sense of vulnerability. My feelings of confidence and accomplishment were gone and I felt, I felt…
I felt panic! It was a guttural, involuntary response to my experiences of surgery.
I lived in those feelings for awhile. I allowed myself to be immersed in my feelings. Then, like the comforting fog and damp drizzle I’d hiked in on Wind Mountain, my feelings of confidence settled on my skin, clouded my eyeglasses, and seeped into my bones again.
Fog hangs over Wind Mountain in the Columbia River Gorge. Photo by Tim Graves
Both my feelings of those-days and my feelings of accomplishment are mine. I own those feelings. They are me. They are mine. They are legitimate. I choose to embrace them for my emotions are God-given.
Our core emotions are of divine origin. Created in the image of God, our emotions tell us something about the nature of the Divine. It is in our passion that the Holy Spirit teaches, nudging us to grow and become more honest with self and the one I call God.
Just as climbing Wind Mountain — a mountain once used by native peoples for Spirit Quests — strengthens my muscles, being present with all my emotions bolsters me spiritually and emotionally. It builds self-awareness, spiritual-awareness, and empathy for others. And so I allow the Spirit to do the Spirit’s work in me.
I choose to grow.
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This is the ninth of multiple posts about my experiences of surgery and recovery following a colonoscopy.
Following my surgery I had a myriad of feelings. A myriad of web searches to find the stories of others, perhaps to validate my own emotions, left me empty handed. And, so, I write these posts to process my very real feelings and in the hopes that someone else finds them useful following their surgery and recovery.
Westward view from Dog Mountain in the central Columbia River Gorge. Photo by Tim Graves
By the end of the day my annoyance at the sensations brought on by my healing nerves and tissue crescendoes. Bending my abdomen as I sit in the bed the pain, though relatively minor, lashes out at me. I remind myself that these sensations in my belly are signs of healing and I am able to simply be with the process.
Undressed for my shower I glance at my wounds and my grief response overcomes me. Part sadness and part involuntary repulsion, I pause in the moment visually examining the two tiny laparoscopic scars and the 2-1/2 inch incision site.
I feel less-than. I am scarred, never to be the same. I touch the railroad track scarring above my belly button, pleased at its slowly fading crimson claim to my abdomen. I run my finger along its ridge that rises above my skin.
Reaching the scarring beneath my naval, my fingers gently move the skin on either side of the wound. Gently moving the injured area side-to-side, I note that while there is skin covering the formerly infected area, is not yet firm like prior to surgery. The area inside my belly seems to still be growing back together. Whether accurate or not, I perceive a hole just beneath a thin skin covering.
And I wonder.
I wonder if I will ever be whole again. I wonder if I will ever be comfortable removing my shirt at the beach or poolside. Though I know better, I wonder if my wife is as repulsed by my scarred body as I am. My self-image and sexuality is scarred along with my body.
Though the concerns of the day soon dominate my thoughts, overcoming my feelings of repulsion and sadness, they are not as easily repressed as the physical sensations I experience as my abdominal tissue and nerves regenerate.
At nearly twelve weeks post-op, I am ready for this to be over. Completely. Totally.
Horsethief Butte in the eastern Columbia River Gorge. Photo by Tim Graves
Diminished into nothingness.
I want the formerly infected incision site to fully heal so that I can imagine I am unchanged. I want to pretend that I never had to open and then keep a hole in my abdomen draining for weeks. I want to be able to pretend that I have a complete colon.
I tell myself that this should be easy for me. I was not diagnosed with cancer nor do I have to face the inconveniences of a colostomy like others.
If this surgical site would just hurry up and heal, I could get on with the business of repressing my feelings. Heck, I whine if the hair shaved off my body prior to cutting would at least finish its regrowth, it would help.
***
As I drove through my beloved Columbia River Gorge, my thoughts turned to geology. I thought about the geological upheavals and ice age flooding that created this downright magical land. My thoughts drifted to the rocky scars among which I hike. The indescribable aesthetic of the region regularly brings me closer to the divine.
I thought about the wound inflicted upon Mother Gaia, our very planet, as this land of enchantment was formed. Out of a brutish force, a singular splendor remains and beguiles me. As I ruminated in appreciation at the result of violent scars to the planet, my synapses burst into action.
I made a connection and began to wonder. I began to reflect upon the hypocrisy of seeing beauty in scars on Mother Gaia but feeling revolted by my own. Though I have a ways to go in accepting my still-healing body, my worth, my beauty as a beloved child of God, is not contingent upon superficial perfection.
The same divinity that creates enchantment in the Columbia River Gorge is already in the process of doing the same with my body, mind, spirit, and soul.
For the Lord takes delight in [God’s] people Psalm 149: 4a NIV
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This is the eighth of multiple posts about my experiences of surgery and recovery following a colonoscopy.
Following my surgery I had a myriad of feelings. A myriad of web searches to find the stories of others, perhaps to validate my own emotions, left me empty handed. And, so, I write these posts to process my very real feelings and in the hopes that someone else finds them useful following their surgery and recovery.
It was at the junction of two trails up the mountain that I first saw him. Well, actually, I passed him by without giving him much notice. No time for niceties; I was on a mission.
***
I’d set a goal for my post-op self. I would travel to the top of Dog Mountain, loop around, and then come down the long way. (The peak of Dog Mountain on the Washington State side of the Columbia River Gorge offers a vigorous route to a lavish carpet of wildflowers at its peak in May and June.)
Huffing and puffing enough to blow a pig’s house down, I finally arrived at a meadow overlooking the Gorge. I lingered awhile among the flowers hoping for resurgent fitness.
I sat awhile.
I ate a snack.
I breathed in the yellows, purples, pinks, and reds that surrounded me. I admired the handiwork of over a million years of geological events displayed at my feet.
No go.
Disappointed, I eventually admitted to myself that my ten-week post-operative body was not going to make it to the top. With a sigh I began the trip back to the trailhead.
I met him again on my way back down the trail. He slowly and steadily continued his ascent. I gestured and smiled, moving to the side for him to get past me.
“Did you make it to the top already?” he asked.
“Not today,” I said feeling all of the shame and disappointment that I’d created for myself. I explained that I was still recovering from surgery. “I’m still building stamina and strength,” I added.
Nodding his head, I felt his empathy and understanding encircle me. Approaching his eightieth birthday, he told me that half of his right foot had been amputated at the beginning of the decade. I listened with my best pastoral ear only later realizing that he was the pastor and I the parishioner.
Just as we were parting — I on my way down the trail and he still journeying upward — he added a few more words. “My attitude” he said, “is that as long as you’re still climbing uphill, you’re not over-the-hill.” I chuckled and wished him well.
My disappointment dissipated with each step downward. “Look how far I’ve come,” I reminded myself. Two months ago I couldn’t roll over in bed without extreme pain. Six weeks ago walking a few loops around the house required a two-hour nap. Four weeks ago a morning of work left me barely able to prepare my lunch.
And today, I climbed 1600-feet in just over a mile and a half! Not bad for someone with only half a colon!
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This is the seventh of multiple posts about my experiences of surgery and recovery following a colonoscopy.
Following my surgery I had a myriad of feelings. A myriad of web searches to find the stories of others, perhaps to validate my own emotions, left me empty handed. And, so, I write these posts to process my very real feelings and in the hopes that someone else finds them useful following their surgery and recovery.
Like a science fiction storyline, my memories were wiped from my brain. All I can do is feel a sense of disgust and fright.
Apparently, it wasn’t enough that the strange hands had moved inside the walls of my abdominal cavity or that things were placed into every orifice of my body while I was drugged. They — those I’d feared in my narcotic painkiller-induced paranoia — had shaved parts of my body that should not be shaved. Even slicing my very body open and removing part of a vital organ was not enough of a violation of my person.
My very thoughts have been taken from me. I cannot trust my own memories. Photo by Tim Graves
My very thoughts have been taken from me. I cannot trust my own memories.
***
Weeks after the surgery in which my right colon was removed, I had an epiphany during a discussion with my wife. In a moment, I realized I had been conflating my experience of the surgical suite before my colonoscopy with another surgical suite before my two-day later colectomy.
Horror descended.
Try as I might, I could not pull up those memories. I’d been doing a mashup of two events in my head, believing them to be accurate memories, for nearly three weeks. Ten-weeks post-op, I still cannot find those memories.
They are gone.
This is not the kind of memory loss that can be jarred by others who were present. It doesn’t feel the same as walking into the next room and forgetting why you went into the room. When I walk into another room, I immediately know that I’ve forgotten. I do not replace a lost thought with another.
I imagine a cavernous space in my head.
In a typical reaction to certain kinds of anesthesia, surgical patients often lose memories before and after administration of the necessary medicine. All this was explained to me by the anesthesiologist before I left pre-op. Or so my wife assures me.
My knowledge that I’ve endured this type of memory loss frolics with doubts about trusting my own mind. It holds hands with my other feelings of personal violation following major surgery. It’s not that I’d have wanted to have my belly cut open with a local, but…
But it is unnerving to have lost a memory so fully and completely. My humanity has been violated.
***
I thought again yesterday about the nature of memory. Memory is a subjective view of an experience. It is fickle. Trying to catch a memory can be as elusive as the butterfly that flits from bloom to bloom.
As I struggled to climb Dog Mountain, I was reminded a little late of the trail’s steepness. Dog Mountain is a popular Washington State hiking destination along the Columbia River just west of Hood River, Oregon. The difficulty of this trail flooded back into my consciousness through straining muscles and heavy breathing. Either I was in better shape when I last climbed Dog Mountain or I’d forgotten the challenge of the ascent. Both are distinct possibilities.
Much too close to the trailhead, I found a rock to catch my breath upon. Photo by Tim Graves
Much too close to the trailhead, I found a rock to catch my breath upon. I pulled out the small book in which I jot down notes and thoughts when hiking. Turning through the pages I read what I’d written when I last hiked this path.
“No vistas [yet]. Just heavy breathing and ears filling up,” I wrote.
In a moment, memories of that hike returned. Yes, I was in better shape last time but even in better shape, I remembered. I recognized the pilgrimage as “challenging.”
Though memory can be fickle, a few written words and my thoughts returned. Details of that particular journey were fresh.
I thought about other times when I remembered forgotten things. Sometimes, the re-membering is triggered by a place, a smell, a song, or a similar experience.
Journeying to the promise of wildflowers at the mountain’s peak, I will learn to embrace this ambiguity. Photo by Tim Graves
Often re-membering comes about in the midst of relationship. We need one another to maintain our memories and stories. Our stories are prompted when another begins to talk about that-time-when. Usually, we each recall only a part or single perspective. Together two of more folks piece together the most complete memory.
I typically find comfort in re-membering. Even remembering difficult times holds some comfort as the distance of time allows a kind of self-reflection from which I can learn and grow. I never know which memories will hold potential for enlightenment. The tiniest of memories sometimes hold significant revelations.
***
The memories removed from my mind by anesthesia will not return. I have been robbed of any potential learning and growth from those moments.
The horror of wiped memories is real.
As I mark the ten-week anniversary of my surgery, feelings of violation and being out-of-control of my own thoughts remains. Lurking just beneath the surface, tears of loss and invasion of my body and mind threaten to burst forth when I think about it.
Still.
Still, time has lessened the intensity of the trauma. The rawness of my shock has become its own memory. The memory that something is missing which was intimately mine, my very thoughts, has begun to open itself up to more than emotional outrage.
In my own personal science fiction drama no cure that miraculously returns my memories will be found. This is my reality. Though my body and mind were violated, I owe my health and, in the long term, even my life to the removal of my right colon.
As the rawness of shock continues to fade, I will continue to put one foot in front of the other as I climb up the mountain. Photo by Tim Graves
The feelings of loss, dismay, and violation are mine now. The ambiguity of not-knowing — of not remembering — belongs to my life journey.
As the rawness of shock continues to fade, I will continue to put one foot in front of the other as I climb up the mountain. Climbing the steep trail, my muscles may ache and I may wonder. Journeying to the promise of wildflowers at the mountain’s peak, I will learn to embrace this ambiguity.
It is mine.
My heart pounds in my chest because death’s terrors have reached me. Fear and trembling have come upon me; I’m shaking all over. Psalm 55:4-5 CEB
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This is the sixth of multiple posts about my experiences of surgery and recovery following a colonoscopy.
Following my surgery I had a myriad of feelings. A myriad of web searches to find the stories of others, perhaps to validate my own emotions, left me empty handed. And, so, I write these posts to process my very real feelings and in the hopes that someone else finds them useful following their surgery and recovery.
Like this bloated beaver I came upon while hiking along the Columbia River, I am mortal. Photo by Tim Graves.
When my wife is twenty minutes late getting home I’ve imagined what my life would be like if the worst happened. This intellectual activity has been part of my routine since the eighties when my 5-1/2 month old nephew died in a freak accident. Nonetheless, up until my surgery some sixty-seven days ago I was immortal.
Perhaps it was the look on the faces of my children, who raced via airway and roadway to be with me that made me mortal. Perhaps, it was the seriousness of my wife’s tone and her diligence in caring for me that made me human. If you’ve been following my blogs, you know I thought the removal of my right colon was No Big Deal. So, that couldn’t be what did it.
Though I’ve told my children since they were tiny that I planned to live to be one-hundred twenty, I wonder now. It’s still my plan; I have a lot of living to do yet.
But I recognize that at fifty-five, I may not live another 65-years, plan or not.
Somehow, the suddenness of major surgery jolted me into mortality. I did not expect it. I went in for a colonoscopy, a routine screening procedure for cancer and other issues, because I am in my fifties. I perceived no problem but rather than heading to the local pizzeria that evening, I was talking about the possibility of cancer with my wife.
Even talking about the c-word with my son wasn’t enough in and of itself to jolt me into mortality but here I am. Mortal. Tim Graves is mortal!
***
Reflecting, I think I became mortal the Sunday following my surgery. It was the look on the face of my first-born — my baby girl! I always get a hug but somehow her hug was more. More something. More fearful?
On the other hand, looking back it may have been on the day before my colectomy. I drove to Portland to pick my son up from the airport and lost the car in the parking garage. I had no idea where I’d left it except that it was facing an outside wall.
Isaac, my son, said to me, “This is kind of an old man thing to do, Dad.” His words were a joke but his face revealed another emotion. He knew this was out-of-character for his detail-oriented father. It might have been in that moment when I became mortal in his eyes and my own.
Or…or it was the day I finally returned home from the hospital and finally read my wife’s blog in which she writes, “An instant can change everything. A routine screening can morph into urgent, major surgery. Uncertainty can overwhelm normalcy. The daily routine of work and home becomes the routine of vital signs, meal trays, and pain management. Roles can be frightfully altered” (It’s Three in the Morning).
***
When my essence one day transforms, I will remain within those I have known. My moisture will seed another tributary or be present in a joyful tear. This photo of the White Salmon River near Husum, Washington was taken by Tim Graves
I have come to realize that my superhero immortality belongs to the world of fiction. The concept of immortality separates us from one another and from the Divine. Immortality is about permanence and control. Endless life — the ultimate control of the uncontrollable — eliminates our need for the Divine in one another.
But we need one another. The One who I call God exists most fully in the spaces between us. The Divine spark exists within each of us but that loving spark burns brightest and fully in those times when we touch another.
I became mortal when others considered the possibility of life without me. When I experienced the emotions of others — through a hug, a joke-less jab, or in an altered relationship — I became what I’ve always been. I became a part of a bigger whole.
I became a part of the river of humanity and creation that flows ever onward. The drop of moisture that I am will eventually evaporate. When my essence one day transforms, I will remain within those I have known. My moisture will seed another tributary or be present in a joyful tear.
As I give up the charade of immortality and with it my make-believe control and pretend permanence, I travel a divine path. I have lost nothing. Instead I have gained a glimpse of the wholeness of creation. I have glimpsed a signpost encouraging me to exist in being who I am and striving to love more fully.
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This is the fifth of multiple posts about my experiences of surgery and recovery following a colonoscopy.
Following my surgery I had a myriad of feelings. A myriad of web searches to find the stories of others, perhaps to validate my own emotions, left me empty handed. And, so, I write these posts to process my very real feelings and in the hopes that someone else finds them useful following their surgery and recovery.
