The Good Doctor

He’s too good of a doctor to leave me as I am.

November 2019

It’s a tragedy and a comedy all at once. I had two surgeries within nine months of each other — one to fix what the other missed.

I remember when I first thought something was wrong with me. The white rush of panic when I realized the possibilities — including the worst case scenario. Dread stayed in the pit of my stomach for the week leading up to my doctor appointment.

But it seemed like it was all for nothing after a breezy examination, the wave of the doctor’s hand — Oh, it’s minor. Just an outpatient surgery. Easy, he said. Not messy. Not painful.

And I, I was satisfied with those answers. Relieved, even.

But when I went under, when his scalpel went to work, it only made shallow cuts. Only later would I find out that he missed the obvious; the glaring, egregious wrongs; the brokenness inside me. Maybe ‘overlook’ isn’t the right word — did he overlook it, or did he only look so far? He chose not to dig deep, to probe, to expose everything that needed to be exposed.

Either way, I was wheeled into recovery with only a shadow of it — a false sense of recovery, if you will. They pronounced me free of the abscess that once resided in me. That I was “all better” now.

But here’s the thing — even when he corrected a corner of my body, he didn’t take in the whole house. It’s like removing a ruptured appendix without cleaning up all the poison that was spewing out of it.

He didn’t give me the medicine I desperately needed, even if it was so much more terrible to bear. He may have operated, but he left me as I was. And surgery — good or bad, easy or hard — isn’t supposed to leave you as you are. It’s supposed to create a monumental, physical shift with lasting effects.

The doctor who I thought was the answer — the mender, the fixer — wasn’t so good after all. Even when I repeatedly told him, “I’m not right! I’m still the same!” He soothed with over-simplifying statements and a bandaid prescription.

There had to be a second doctor. A better doctor. A doctor who dug deep, cut deep. Who did the ugly work, the bloody work. Whose scalpel cut through my virgin skin, who removed the greater fault. The greater sin of my flesh.

So when the fog of anesthesia lifted, it was a different body I woke up to. A scarred one, one that I’m still living to learn with. But my very mending came in my undoing — only with the separation of my skin, my flesh, did my healing really begin.

_________

December 2020

The one year anniversary of my second surgery just passed. The pain of it all is fading fast (how quick we are to forget), but the scar, the three inches on my abdomen? It’s still there.

My health is a tender thing to me — I don’t like to advertise it, and every time I try to make sense of it, I’m left with a mess of thoughts. So I push through. I tough it out. I bluster past it all. And that works, for the most part. I get through it. I’m not slowed down.

But then a pandemic came, the world got quiet and the cacophony of life died down. I could actually hear my thoughts again. And my dry, weary spirit started to feel again. I started to pick up on the stories and movements and moments going on in and around me.

I finally began to sit with the aftermath of my surgery. To wrestle with and reconcile the pain of my life. To stop being so resistant to it and finally allow myself to feel weak. And that, that is where I am writing from.

I don’t remember the day, where I was, or what I was doing. But suddenly the words started to flow and everything started to click. I just started to write –

“He’s too good of a Doctor to leave me as I am.”

With that sentence, the narrative shifted and I was no longer the resentful patient, always casting irritated, sidelong glances in the direction of my first doctor.

My surgeries — however painful they were — had something to say to me. God — the great Storyteller, the speaker of my heart language — had something to say that would rattle my depths and leave me feeling so small and loved.

With my two doctors, my two surgeries, He painted for me the most beautiful metaphor.

You see, He is the Good Doctor, and He is too good to leave me in all my physical and metaphorical flesh, in my brokenness of body and will.

He doesn’t care for my comfort, not when my soul is at stake. The easy fix doesn’t satisfy Him. He takes in all of me — the whole house — not just the corner I give him.

I am Eustace the Dragon, and He is Aslan, ready and willing to transform me in a way that I never could on my own. [See The Voyage of the Dawn Treader — Chapter 7]

He’s committed to the deeply intrusive work, the cutting away of all my self-protection, peeling back the layers of my dragon skin.

He wants all of me.

And my scarred body proves it. This line, where the skin is still foreign and fraught, is not a sign of an inadequate God. The very opposite. This still-tender mark I bear is the mark of a most-merciful God.

And it fills me with such gratitude. What kind of place would I be in if I only had that first doctor?

I’d still be straining, battling with my own flesh, warring with this demon inside of me. Even though I would have gotten the easy way out, I’d still be worn and weary.

But He claimed me as His, all of me and more.

When He found me in my disappointment, in the aftermath of my less-than healing, He said, “This one will hurt far more than the first. I will go deeper, rearrange your insides. It will take longer to heal, but when you are healed, you won’t live the same.”

And all that was true. I was in the hospital for a week (internal bleeding is a beast), barely able to make laps around the unit floor without relying heavily on my IV stand. Heck, I was barely able to get out of bed. It took months before I could move freely. And even then, healing was slow and bumpy and bloody.

But it was the sweetest mercy. Pure, unabashed mercy.

For so long I’d run from the heart of pain (and I’m still tempted to most days). But now — now I see the first doctor’s omission as even greater evidence of a Good Doctor. And He’s too good to leave me as I am.