Brush with My Own Mortality

I had planned to write a glorious post about all the recent blessings I've been receiving as of late.  There has been lots to talk about in terms of priesthood blessings received, sacred callings to church service, jobs provided, improving health and chances to develop talents etc.  The good things have been plentiful.  I was truly in the rosiest situation I had been in years.  All very orchestrated by heaven I know.

It had been over 3 years since the divorce and much of the hurt had dissipated.  My relationship with my children has always remained strong.  Goals were continuing to be worked on.  Hope was still high that I would eventually find the right partner etc.

But as we know, life is not without opposition.

• 2 Nephi 2:11

  11 For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.
  Such is the case with me and with all of us.  If we are looking for a life with no challenges and continued and unmitigated success, we have come to the wrong planet. We Mormons believe that we lived before we came to this earth.  This is a truth that has been lost to most of the world yet we know it fervently.  Our souls were not just created on the day of our births into this world.  We are eternal beings who lived with our heavenly parents for eons before accepting our assignments for growth here on this world.  We all knew what we signed up for before coming to this earth and we accepted that life was going to be full of challenges, reversals, pain, sickness and yes suffering.  We knew that it is the only way to grow.  It is the only way to gain the attributes that our Heavenly Father has.  It is the only way to become like him and that only if we choose to accept and learn from our suffering in the holy way designed by him.  We can choose not to participate in this program and go on to curse God and the universe.  That is our right.  But that's not who I am.  That's never been who I am and I pray that it's not you either.
  So after I had been enjoying a some of the blessings of life I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that some opposition hit me.
  
  In early January I got sick and had trouble breathing.  I thought this was a result of my asthma, which played a minor part, but little did I know that I had aspirated something into my right lung which caused me to develop an abscess of some kind which can only be described as a big ball of bloody puss.  The chest X-rays I had done could not detect this abscess.  It was hidden by my diaphragm.  One night after attempting to get medical help via my doctor and Instacare, I awoke unable to to take a full breath.  Every time I inhaled I felt as if a knife was being plunged into my right chest cavity.  I got up at 3:00 am and stumbled around my apartment hoping that somehow this feeling would dissipate but it wouldn't.  I began to panic because I couldn't breathe.  It felt like a combination of being stabbed in the chest and also feeling like I was drowning at the same time.  Around 4:00 AM, I called my parents who live upstairs from me for help.  I couldn't even talk.  They came immediately and my Mom called 911 for me because I couldn't speak without coughing and sputtering uncontrollably.
  
  Soon the EMTs arrived and gave me a breathing treatment for asthma.  They kept telling me my oxygen levels were good, but I couldn't breathe despite that.  I could not expand my chest cavity.  I could only shallow breathe like a humming bird.  Soon they loaded me up in an ambulance and I arrived at the University of Utah Hospital a few minutes later.  After more chest X-rays and eventually a CT Scan they discovered the abscess.  They diagnosed me with the abscess and pneumonia and admitted me to the hospital.
  
  I spent the next 13 days there.  I was blessed with very good care from the doctors and nurses but there was plenty of discomfort to experience.  I was coughing a lot and every time I did, it hurt again like a knife being stuck into me.  I also coughed so hard that it would make me gag like I was throwing up.  Nothing came up from my stomach, but plenty of that bloody puss came up from my lung on a regular basis.
  
  The doctors decided to put a chest tube into my right lung area where they located most of the fluid build up.  I had like a little portable suitcase attached to me and the chest tube.  Soon I drained out about 2.5 liters of the aforementioned bloody puss.  One of the hard aspects of this was the fact that the doctors had to come in 12 separate times to inject medicine into the tube which would break up all the compartments and crystallization that my lungs built to contain the puss.  When they injected this medicine I could feel and even almost hear bubbles popping and crackling inside my chest.  A couple of times the medicine would find its' way up into my throat and then I would start to cough again profoundly and spit up more of the bloody puss while they were injecting me.  It was awful.
  
  The night before they placed the chest tube into my chest cavity I was forbidden to eat or drink after midnight.  The only problem was that I had a cold with all this pneumonia and for some reason my throat and mouth completely dried up in the night.  I felt like I was going to die.  I was like a man in the desert.  I was parched and the nurses didn't want to give me anything because of the procedure that I was going to have in the morning.  I told them that they had to at least bring me some ice chips or I wasn't going to make it.  This they did reluctantly.  I had to wait for my procedure till the following afternoon because there were other patients that were in a more serious condition than myself.  That was one of the worst nights I ever have had on this earth.  I think that the nurses could have given me more fluids in my IV that night, but for some reason I don't think this was done.  They took care of it the next time.  They later removed the chest tube and put a new one into a different location in my chest cavity.  I didn't push out as much puss with the second chest tube, but it did get some out.  They told me that the fluid was extremely thick and that is why is was hard to drain.
  
  I spent my time in the hospital watching the tennis Australian Open and the NFL Playoffs.  I got to see my Atlanta Falcons win their division and secure a place in the Super Bowl.  I also had many visitors come including many family members and friends that I have made since being single.  All of the visits were a blessing to me.  One of my good friends from the single world came and did a foot zone treatment on me using essential oils that she determined that my body needed.  She rubbed these oils into my feet and also massaged the many pressure points.  I actually felt heat leave my body as she did this and it was the only time in the hospital that I actually felt good for a little while.  I greatly appreciated my friend's kindness in doing that for me.  Others also came and rubbed my back and feet and some helped me go on walks in the hospital.  They were angels in human form.  Also many came and just talked with me.  That was very therapeutic as well.  There is nothing worse when you're sick to sit around and talk about your problems.  It's so much better to talk about other things, news, sports, spirituality, family, anything other than focusing on your own issues.
  
  Also during this ordeal I experienced an extreme lack of protein which caused me to swell up around my stomach and down my right leg and ankle.  Although I had lost all appetite for weeks I was carrying water around my stomach which made me look fat.  It looked like a jelly belly that would wiggle and jiggle when I moved.  I hated that.   My face had grown skinny with the lack of eating but my belly was all swollen up.  I guess I'm too vain!  I don't like my gut looking like a sack of jello!  Eventually it dissipated on it's own so I look somewhat normal again, just a lot skinnier.  I have lost about 20 pounds in this ordeal.  I definitely wanted to drop a few pounds before, but not like that.  I paid a very high price to drop that 20.
  
  I also experienced night sweats for at least 3 weeks.  In the hospital I would sweat through my clothes and bed sheets and had to ask the nurses to change them 2 or 3 times a day.  When I got home from the hospital I continued sweating through my sheets and had to change my night clothes and sheets every night.  It is the worst feeling to wake up in the night and feel wet and cold because you have been sweating for hours.  It's no fun.
  
  One nice experience happened with my daughter Analisa.  She is married to a wonderful man but she still loves her Dad.  She came to visit several times in the hospital.  One day when Analisa was with me, there was a somewhat feisty nurses assistant present.  When I asked for her help on something, she would say no immediately.  I know she was just somewhat joking with me but it wasn't funny to me and I found it kind of offensive.  She wanted to make the point to me that I should be doing things for myself.  My thought was that I was suffering and needed kind assistance from the staff and I also was paying good money for the service there.  I had asked for her assistance to help me take a sponge bath.  This is just a matter of wiping a person down with soap and water and drying them off.  It is a kind and precious service to provide for someone who is suffering.  You do not remove all your clothes or anything like that.  It is a respectful and modest thing but it helps you regain some of your dignity to feel clean again.  Well, this nurses assistant didn't want to help me but she did bring in soap and water and towels so that I could do it myself.  I'm sure I could have done it myself.  That is true.  But my daughter Analisa stepped forward and helped me wash my arms and legs, my stomach, chest and back, and also my neck and face.  It was a very kind thing for her to do for her father and I appreciated it.  I will always remember that she provided that service for me when I was so weak and suffering so much.  She is a true blessing in my life just as each one of my children are.
  
  I must say that my parents have supported me heroically throughout this whole ordeal.  They are in their 70's but are in great health and condition.  They would both come spend hours with me everyday in the hospital.  I feel that I should be supporting them, but they are the ones supporting me.  They shouldn't have to do that at their age but they do and I am eternally grateful.  Even though I am out of the hospital, they check on me everyday and make sure I have everything I need.
  
  So where am I now?  I am home and recovering.  I notice small improvements every day although I still cough a lot and my right lung is not fully inflated yet.  I'm working on that.  I also don't yet have much of an appetite.  My sense of smell and taste suffered greatly in this experience.  Everything smells and tastes bad.  It's improving slowly but it's hard to eat when your sense of smell and taste are messed up.  I know that I'll be back to normal again soon.  In the meantime I'm on short term disability from work.  This is a blessing and will give me the necessary time to recover and I will recover.
  
  When all of this first happened to me I must admit that I temporalily felt that I had gotten a raw deal and that God must be mad at me, but then I remembered that our Father doesn't work that way.   All things work together for good for them that love the Lord.  God was just allowing me to be purified through this difficult experience.  He was teaching me and reminding me to rely on him, that he would support me through all my trials.  He does not rejoice in our pain but he provides his mercy and grace to us through our trials.  Sometimes we wish that we could change God's will, that we could have him save everyone from any kind of suffering, but this would not be to our eternal benefit.  It would deny us of the growth opportunities that we came to this world to experience.  We are on a holy path my brothers and sisters.  There is no lack of meaning in our earthly experiences.  It is all designed to help us on our way back to our Father in Heaven.
  
  I must mention that though I know I could have died in an experience like this, I did not pass that threshold to the other side.  I know that many have had sacred experiences with dyeing and visiting the other side of the veil.  This did not happen in my case.  I know that this is not my ordained path at least at this time.  I believe that the Lord wants me to continue to exercise my faith in him without having the privilege of witnessing or seeing what we would call heaven or paradise.  That experience will come to all of us at the very least when we lay our mortal bodies down.  I have no doubt that I will know the Savior when I see him again.  I say "again" because although we cannot remember, we have all seen the Savior before we entered this world.  That knowledge has been kept from us in this sphere so that we would learn to exercise and walk by faith because without faith it is impossible to please Him.  (See Hebrews 11)  It is one of the very basic things we have come to develop in this mortal life.  I have no doubt, however, that God lives and that there is a heaven and that angels from the other side help us on this side although we are mostly unaware of their assistance.
  
  I know that I will fully recover from this.  It is not my time to depart this earth.  I was promised this in two separate priesthood blessings that I received from my father.  I am still in the midst of this recovery but I know that I'll be alright.  I have learned, however, that life is fragile, and that God could call us home at any time.  Have we done enough to prepare ourselves to leave this life? It not, we need to prepare quickly.  The next life is only a heartbeat away.
  
  Thank you my brothers and sisters. I hope that we will always continue our walk of faith and our journey towards God.