In December of 2012, my second year working for a school district, I decided to have a semi-elective surgery over the Christmas break. It was a standard procedure and two weeks should have been plenty of recovery time to return to a desk job. This was not a life-or-death procedure, but it wasn't a nose job either. I had a condition that would cause me pain and discomfort one or two days a month. On those days my lifestyle was affected - I didn't like to leave the house on those days. At the time my youngest was 7 and I wanted to be free to be fully his mother and go anywhere anytime.
So I took two extra days off from work, checked into the hospital on a Thursday morning and expected to be released Thursday night. My surgery started late but when the doctor came to visit me beforehand he said I'd be released on Friday. "Friday!" I said. Now-a-days hospitals are always trying to rush the patients out the door so I was surprised that I was staying overnight.
During the night the nurse kept changing my dressing and tried not to let on that she was concerned about the frequency that she was changing it. My husband called me in the morning and it was all I could do to have a three-minute conversation with him. I hung up the phone exhausted and worn out. Then my doctor's colleague came to see me. (Turns out my doctor had gone on vacation!) While she examined me she told me to cough. That wound up loosening a blood clot and before I knew it I was going back for a second surgery - this time an emergency. Apparently there was a problem with some internal stitches.
I stayed in the hospital for two more days. I finally made it home Sunday night - and here I thought I'd have been able to attend church Sunday morning. One of the ladies in my book club brought me Communion and I felt really bad for being so selfish as to have a surgery to correct an inconvenience so close to the holidays. I had lost so much blood - something ridiculous like 60% of the blood in my body. I was much closer to death than I like to recognize and certainly more than the doctors want to admit. If I had died my children would have forever remembered the anniversary of my death just a few days before Christmas - what terrible timing (not that there is ever a good time).
A lot of people think that near-death experiences change their outlook on life - and maybe it does, for a while. For me I was a bit more humble for a while. But the only lasting effects were a vow to never have another surgery unless it is required to keep on living. And, if I ever did have the luxury to schedule a life-saving surgery, I would not do it near the holidays. I would also ensure that the doctor was not going on vacation the next day. Part of me wonders if he was in a hurry to catch a plane - since we had already started late. Maybe if he hadn't been in a hurry he wouldn't have missed a stitch.
I did a lot of laying around on the sofa at the end of 2012. On New Year's Eve I drug myself to the house of some friends. It was just a couple of families with children the same age getting together for a backyard fireworks show. I laid on the chaise lounge and watched the spectacular. I found myself at the same house on New Year's Eve 2014 and, as I did at other times during the Christmas season 2013 and 2014, I reflected on how near death I had come and how nice it was to be alive. I suspect I will have the same recollections at the end of 2015 and 2016. After that...God only knows.
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