About three years ago I wrote a column on mortality—Memento Mori. Quite recently I had cause to reflect on mortality once again.
About a month ago, medical professionals wheeled me into the catheterization lab – a specialized hospital room equipped with advanced imaging technology. Cardiologists perform angiograms, stent placements, and pacemaker implantations in these rooms. In my case, my cardiologist inserted a stent in my left anterior descending artery.
The left anterior descending artery is not a happy place to have a blockage, but mine was partial – 40 to 60 percent (but who’s counting, right?). The rest of the arteries were in fairly good shape so I only needed one stent. I am now in cardiac rehabilitation three days a week.
Some of my fellow rehab patients have had as many as five stents with 80 percent or more blockage in some of their arteries. So I came out of it pretty well, thanks be to God!
A Short PSA
Please allow me to break for a little public service announcement here.
I struggled with increasing shortness of breath for a year or so before seeing a cardiologist. Initially it seemed to be just age related “out of shape” from an increased sedentary life after retirement. The last 6 or 8 weeks though, the problem worsened progressively and significantly.
After spending some time with wet feet while admiring the pyramids (DeNile isn’t just a river!) I made a doctor’s appointment. I saw the doctor on a Tuesday, and on Friday morning I was in the cath lab. So, my advice is don’t mess with cardiac symptoms. See your doctor and get things fixed early and (if necessary) often.
I am reasonably comfortable with my mortality, but I am not eager to begin that particular journey before it is necessary and ordained. I am grateful for the progress in repairing and rehabilitating problems such as mine.
I am even paying attention in the class part of rehab. I am learning to accept the idea that everything I eat does not have to be dripping with butter, crusted with salt, or sweetened to the point of making bees or even three-year olds nauseous.
So I repeat: see your doctor and get things fixed early and (if necessary) often. More can be done than you might imagine!
Thank you for indulging my personal exegesis.
Rehabilitation Require Reflection
Being now in rehabilitation, I am revisiting the topic of remembering my mortality. This has given me reason to reflect on the human propensity to assume things are fine when they really may not be at all. As rehabilitation and recovery have progressed, I have been extending these thoughts from my physical health to my spiritual health.
Bacon, eggs, and heavily buttered toast may not be a mortal sin, but it is a breakfast that I need to approach with considerable moderation. Now it is a special occasion treat once or twice a year instead of a bi-monthly tradition.
It is also time, and past time, that I recover some kind of regular exercise habit. I let this habit lapse after I retired several years ago, no longer having access to the company gym. Cardiac health advice is everywhere you look for it, and it does apply to everyone, increasingly as the years pass.
But long before I faced the need for applying practical virtue to my health issues – by admitting, frankly, that I could indeed have health issues – I began a regular practice of spiritual rehabilitation.
At least I thought I had. I regularly attend Mass, regularly pray, and weekly attend Holy Hour in our Parish’s Adoration Chapel. I also work on my CS monthly column, and moderate a study group on Tuesday evenings. (We have studied, among others, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Dante, C. S. Lewis, and are currently working on The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis.) All of this seemed to be a pretty consistent commitment to spiritual health.
Well, a visit to the cath lab and three afternoons a week spent in supervised exercise and cardiac health education has a way of making you look a little more closely at what you are really doing. Before my visit to the cardiologist I’d have maintained that I walked enough and played with the dog enough to have a reasonable level of exercise.
But it was not enough – not at all.
I’d have pointed to the fact that I had lost 35 lbs in the last 7 or 8 months as proof that I had improved my diet. But I really hadn’t. My appetite was just responding to changes taking place due to age. Some of that loss was fat, but I now recognize that some was muscle mass from reduced activity.
We Do Not See What We Do Not Want to See
You see the point, I hope. We do not see what we do not want to see.
There is an interesting story in Luke, Chapter Four (Luke 4:18-30) set early in Jesus ministry when he angers the people in his home synagogue at Nazareth.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.
“Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.
“And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They also asked, “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?”
“He said to them, “Surely you will quote me this proverb, ‘Physician, cure yourself,’ and say, ‘Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum’.”
“And he said, “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place. “Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon.
“Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”
“When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But he passed through the midst of them and went away.”
Now this is an interesting story for many reasons, but one of the things it always seemed to teach to me is how it is that people have eyes and yet refuse to see. Jesus was in their midst, and reports of his works had reached them. They heard for themselves how he taught, with authority and not just rote learning. However, the story tells us “he passed through the midst of them and went away.“
He did not make himself invisible; the Gospels would have scarcely omitted that miracle. They did not see him because having rejected his divine nature they could no longer see his earthly nature, either.
So it is with us. We do not have do reject all of a doctrine, or some truth from scripture, or some teaching of the Church, or even some stubborn fact from secular reality. We need only reject enough of it to blind ourselves to the rest. Failure to blind ourselves to the rest is to risk having to confront what we are trying to deny.
Remember Thou Art Dust and to Dust Thou Shalt Return
Now, as I watch the minutes tick down on the timer while I trudge along the treadmill’s steady conveyer belt, or use the pedals and arm poles on the recumbent cross trainer, my focus has changed. I find I am a little more able, every day, to focus on something other than keeping my breath regular and my speed at the proper pace.
I view these physical activities as a kind of medical penance. They are not assigned as punishment, but are carefully prescribed to repair my damaged health and restore me to a right relationship with my body. They bring my body into closer alignment with the requirements of the real world.
The medical professionals are, in some sense, expert practitioners of forgiveness. I have heard of the occasional doctor or nurse who will chew a patient out for failing to follow a diet or exercise regimen, or who refuses to take their pills. Generally, however, they exhibit a gentle grace of persuasion. They recognize how difficult it is to change lifetime habits. They also know that too many of our self-destructive practices of diet and sloth result from the way people cope with difficulty and unhappiness in their lives.
I try to remember to express my gratitude for their compassionate and constructive attitudes with some regularity (while trying to avoid flattery).
And I need to bring this realization with me into the Sacrament of Penance. I need to remind myself that every time I approach the Eucharist, God is desiring to work some beneficial change in me through the Graces of the Body and Blood. What I am realizing about recovery and rehabilitation in my medical journey is capable of illuminating my participation not only in the Eucharist, but in all the Sacraments of the Church.
Lessons
I want to be careful to be clear about this: I do not believe God gave me a blockage so that I would meditate on these things. I believe that my lifelong habits of careless diet, undisciplined exercise, and ability to procrastinate and refuse to deal with something I’d prefer to ignore left me in perfect shape for the kind of health problem I experienced. In fact, God blessed me. The doctor caught my problem early enough and handled it well. Now I have a chance for years of good health and activity – as long as I do not forget the lessons I learned the hard way.
Instead I believe that God gifted me with access to good care, and with the resources to take advantage of the care available. He also gifted me with the wit to understand that the time for fooling around has passed!
I think that the years of prayer and study and attendance at Parish services and events have left me prepared to draw sound lessons and conclusions when God takes to trouble to allow my nose to be rubbed in the subject matter. And I believe that much of what happened with this is “my own grievous fault.”
And I thank God for blessing the world with people whose vocations lead them to healing professions, from research to hands-on care to reparative and restorative work for those whose complete healing will require continuing stages and effort.
A Prayer
Father, we give you thanks for your generous gifts of healing that you share with us through those you have called to the many vocations that minister to your children in need. We ask you to bless and sustain them in their labors, comfort them when they are tired or in grief, grant them courage and insight as they battle with the many ailments and infirmities that besiege their patients, and lend your presence and support to them when they are assaulted by doubts and insecurities and any guilt they may feel from not being superhuman in their work. Make those they minister to mindful of your great mercies and their obedient service to your will, that their patients may show forth the love and gratitude you desire to pour out on them every day, serving you in their own turn.
And above all we give you thanks for the healing Grace you pour out on the world every day through the love of your Son, our Savior, and through the power of the Holy Spirit.
AMEN
