Monday, 11 August 2008

• The Divorce of Body and Mind in Rehab

  by miss poppy

  

  
  Note: I was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease in 2003. After the initial diagnosis, I spent much of the next year in the hospital as a result of various complications. God's presence with me during that horrendous time is one of the reasons I love Him so much today. His nearness started me on a journey of discovering who He is and who He wants to be in me. This is a story of that time.

  The worst aspect of my illness was the divorce of body and mind. The body is that inanimate thing lying on the immaculate white sheets, while the mind is that all too lively, disembodied voice that dully bleeps, "fear fear fear fear" until even fear is received with complacency because of its regularity.  And dayish nights and nightish days pass with the clicks of pens on charts and the strange white hugeness of machines that emit beeps and whirrs.

  They come in often, mostly kind, mostly concerned. They prick and question and suggest and test. Then they say-no you can’t go yet, you’re a sick young lady and you have to stay a while to make sure you get better-and the ones in the cheerful scrubs feel bad because you’re young and young people are supposed to be out doing things not lying in a room with an NPO sign outside the door.

  And they put something in the IV tube. Something that makes you cry and you can’t stop so you tell the doctor about it and they put in something else, but they almost forgot to give it to you in the first place, and that could really make you sick, sicker than you are. The needles are more constant than the faces. You could forget a nurse’s name, but not the feel of having the light flood your room in the night and a cheerful tech try to poke you to get a couple of vials of blood, but you’re dehydrated, so it takes a few tries. Not as bad as the nurse that tried to start the IV the day before and had to get a specialist instead.

  The mind retreats as far as it can and then you start to feel like it will never end and the whiteness and pain with stay forever. And you want it all to be over, but it doesn’t seem fair. And you can’t sleep because everything is off except the brain. And you want to pray, but isn’t it God’s fault? Sometimes you hate Him so much you would shake your fist if it would make any difference. So the divorce occurs, and you feel like you’re looking at your body from somewhere in the ceiling. Your stupid, defective torture device body lies there and your brain wants to escape and be somewhere else but somehow it’s still stuck in its clay casing. Finally you feel like you can’t take it if they stick you one more time. Insanity seems to lurk on the end of the next needle, but you do take it. You take it again and again and again. And still you’re sane.

  So finally you ask God. Not why. Not when. You already did that. Just ask Him if He’s there. And then you feel Him and it’s different. He’s there somewhere in that middle surreal place where your brain drifts aimlessly. The fear is assuaged, or maybe it’s that you remember where the end of the road leads. Everything’s the same, really. The pain. The horror. But there’s Somebody with you where nobody else can go. And you don’t just believe it. You know it because you felt it. And you’re glad. Because next time when you’re stuck under the big machine and you’re not allowed to move, you talk to him and somehow you know that He feels. The journey stretches on into the furthest reaches of imagination; the dullness come and goes, but you can look back to the moment and know that He doesn’t.

  If the pain hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t be who you are. If He hadn’t been there, He wouldn’t be who He is.

  For you, does pain emphasize God's presence?

  • 4:01 PM
  • 1094 Views
  • 16 eProps
  • 12 Comments