To finish a longer run today I took a
lap around the Traverse City Civic Center. I passed moms pushing
strollers and toddlers on training wheels. A pretty young woman
jogging in the opposite direction gave me a thumbs up. The track
forms a circle. Just before I finished around she came again.
Though I was nearing nine miles I straightened up and tried to look
tough. She smiled and said, “Good going, and at your age!”
After I crossed my finish line a truly
old man came shambling along. With one shoulder hiked above the
other, he scraped his shoes on the asphalt. He wore earplugs. As we
passed I clearly heard Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf. He had it
cranked. He was listening to a song about a rock musician taking a
“little girl” (groupie) on a “magic carpet ride” (drug trip).
Maybe I am getting old, after all.
Last Friday I failed for the second
night in a row to get to sleep. A dull pain that had first appeared
two days earlier grew more intense. I could put my finger in the small of my back exactly where
it hurt. Then it hurt more. Then I could not find a posture in
which it did not hurt. Now, I thought God put our appendixes in the
lower left abdomen. It turns out God put them on the right side.
But because I misunderstood I felt a rising panic. I awakened Linda
and said, “We have to go in. I think it's my appendix.” Thank
God I was wrong. If I had not feared a rupture I probably would not
have said a word.
After
oral and physical exams, cat scans and a couple of visits from the
vampires (for tests, they alleged) in came the verdict: I have a
blood clot in my left lung. They guess it came from an arm or leg,
then traveled through the veins to my lung, which trapped it. Turns
out this happens all the time. Virtually all these clots harmlessly
dissolve into the tissues surrounding wherever they stop. But this
one was too big. As the Bible says it “set its tent”, stayed
long enough to prevent blood flow to a small portion of lung. That
little piece of my lung is dead. It will not regenerate, but my
lungs will—in yet another proof of God's incredible design—develop
added capacity to compensate. As long as I am a good little boy,
take my drugs and follow my diet, I have no restrictions. Hence the
nine mile run today.
Hence
the young woman putting me in my old place. How humbling aging is.
Only the most obtuse man can retain the illusion of control over his
own mortality while laying in a hospital bed, wearing the “Summer
Breeze” gown, and being told by the nurse to “roll over so I can
stick you in your tush”. Another nurse, listening to my lower
lung, said, “Hmm. Not much going on in this part.” I wondered
whether my life insurance policy is paid up. I think this way as
often as, well, I think this is the first time I have ever thought
this way.
On the
other hand, life is good. God is good. Today I got to go running.
It is a perfect Up North day. The sky is a pure blue and the gentle
wind was in my face on the homeward leg. I passed groves of cedar
and pine, families on bikes, disabled people being rolled down the
path by their helpers.
My
roommate at the hospital had been incarcerated there for three weeks.
His doctor had told him he would go home that afternoon. Then the
“wound team” came to re-bandage his foot. As they took off the
old gauze they could not help making sounds of dismay. I could smell
the rot from fifteen feet away. “What? What do you see?” he
kept asking. They paged a doctor. The doctor told him his last two
toes have to come off. He won't leave the hospital anytime soon.
Getting
older happens only to the fortunate. Living well while we age
happens mostly to those who remember who really is in charge.
Sometimes it gets extraordinarily difficult to believe in a loving
God. I pray that my experience will prepare me for far sterner tests
to come.
And in
the meantime, I hope to savor every last mile my feet carry me.
