Extended Stay

I am freezing. I am burning up. I try to get up, but I am dizzy. I call my nurse. My chest hurts. This is definitely not a good day. The nurse takes my temperature. "I suspected as much," he says. My fever is back. "Looks like you get an extended stay at Hotel Strong," he jokes. I laugh despite feeling so horrible. Minutes later I have an EKG and get hooked to a heart monitor, just to make sure my chest pain is not heart trouble. There is some concern over whether a murmur is the same one I had in childhood or something new.

More pills, more drugs, more belly shots (have you ever done belly shots? I do not recommend them, but the nurses here have perfected a technique of making it as painless as possible). I toss. I turn. I drag myself to the bathroom hauling my constant companion, Irving the IV pole. The diarrhea has worsened, probably due to the hefty antibiotics. Even my personal axle grease is having a hard time keeping up.

My mind wants to play What If. What if you take a nose dive and get even worse? What if your bones are so fragile from the cancer that they are disintegrating and they have to replace them one by one with metal rods, giving a whole new meaning to the moniker Iron Woman? What if I can't work and I end up living on the street? Without health insurance? What if I die?

OK, that was enough to snap me out of it. See how crazy your head can get if you apply free creative thinking to negative situations? Not that my fears are entirely groundless, but such speculation is unproductive and pointless. Besides, I learned a long time ago that God takes good care of me and he has always supplied my needs.

As for the dying part, can you imagine this presumptuous conversation with God?

"Lord, could we talk about when? I mean, really, I have to stay alive until Drew graduates from high school. It would be cruel to desert him before that, don't you agree? And it would be awfully nice if I could be there for him through college and see him at least graduate and maybe even get settled in a good job. And then, I should be there for my grandchildren and be part of their lives, maybe even for my great grandchildren.

Well, I think you can see, Lord, there simply isn't a convenient time for me to die, don't you agree? I'm sure you understand. After all, you gave Methuselah 900 years. Surely a measly 100 years for me is no big deal.

Can you imagine the audacity? For the most part, we don't get to pick when we die. We only get to pick how we live. I turn to the best cure for the What Ifs that I know - quoting every Scripture verse I know, starting in Genesis. Long before I got to Psalms, I was resting peacefully.