As I mentioned earlier, if you've been praying for my recovery since my partial thyroidectomy, it's safe to move me down your prayer list (unless you'd like to give me spiritual support for my Wednesday talk at Georgetown and Sunday talk at Yale's Sex Week).
Pretty much everything anyone could have prayed for me with regard to the operation was answered. The operation went beautifully, I am healing very well and in good spirits, and it now turns out I may not even need a second operation to remove the rest of my thyroid. As a friend puts it, "I just love it when God says 'yes."
My ENT, who also did the surgery, told me last week when he removed my stitches that the nodule in the tumor that was removed was a Stage 1 tumor, fully encapsulated — meaning it had not spread outside the boundaries of my thyroid. He recommended I get a second opinion from an endocrinologist on whether I should get the remainder of my thyroid out, and I will go in for that opinion on the 21st. My dad observes that the most important factor to consider is what are the proven odds of patients with cancer in one lobe of the thyroid developing it in the remaining lobe. Considering the rate of incidence of thyroid cancer, there should be a good body of data on that.
If the odds are high that I would eventually need a second operation, I'm leaning towards getting it sooner rather than later, because I'm recovering so well from the one I underwent January 29, and it is better to have it done while I am younger and in good health.
* * *
In other news, I started my new job last week and love it. I am working as a co-writer on a six-month book project for an executive at a Washington think tank, As I have not yet asked permission from my employer to name the organization publicly, I'll just say that it is the place where I most wanted to work when I first considered moving to Washington, but the right job was not available at that time.
I love what I am doing at the new gig and I am enjoying getting to know my co-workers. It is far and away the best office environment I have ever experienced. Also, unlike before, when I had an hour-long commute to work that involved a bus and Metro, I now have a 15-minute foot-and-Metro commute, or a 35-minute walk that takes me past the White House. Best of all, I have the choice of working at home when I feel like it.
Last night, my dad asked me on the phone how I was doing. I told him that this is the happiest time of my life. It really is. I count my blessings and they are overflowing.
So, thank you so much again if you have sent prayers my way. I've truly felt them and, in the mysterious economy of prayer, I believe any overflow has gone to those who are in my intentions.
I made it out of my home this evening for the first time since returning from the hospital Wednesday afternoon to have dinner with my father and stepmother, who live very conveniently just a block away.
My father asked me if I would like a glass of wine, which didn't strike me as unusual since he's taken to asking me that since I started having dinner with him and my stepmother from time to time after moving down from New Jersey last July. It always makes me feel rather grown-up.
Once I was well-situated with a tall glass of Zinfandel (my favorite) with ice (for my raw, post-operative throat), Dad told me the results of the pathology of the part of my thyroid that was removed Tuesday. I had authorized my doctor to share my information with him, and Dad also knows the rest of my medical team because he has worked for the hospital's parent university's medical school for nearly 30 years.
The good news is that the carcinoma is encapsulated, or, as my father put it, the margins are good, so it has not metastasized, thank God. That means that my doctor expects that both it and the Hashimoto's disease will be completely cured with the removal of the remainder of my thyroid (which I will need to have done within the coming months — the date has not yet been set), and with my receiving radioactive iodine therapy afterwards. The iodine therapy takes just a few days or so, and a friend who's had it told me he felt no ill effects. As I am, thankfully, otherwise healthy, the doctor says that my prognosis is excellent.
I wrote earlier that I believed my father made the best decision he could under the circumstances when he OK'd the removal of just part of my thyroid rather than the whole thing. Given the information that was available to him at the time, my opinion still stands.
I have some thoughts I would like to write about this news, including how thankful I am for the ways that the circumstances of my life have come together to make me ideally situated to get the best treatment. However, I have been overexerting myself with conversations as well as late-night blogging, neither of which are good for recovery, so I will leave that entry for sometime this weekend.
Please know that, even though this is a very stressful experience, I feel very blessed amid the stress. Compared to others who undergo illness, my circumstances could not be better. I am getting the best possible medical treatment; I live near family members who take wonderful care of me (and I have other relatives who pray for me and otherwise show their love and concern), and my friends have touched me deeply with their affection and willingness to be there for me. Also, I have learned through my blog that many more people pray for me, and, as I wrote earlier, I have already been blessed with graces through your prayers. My thanks go out to you again.
The first feeling you have when you wake up in the hospital is regret— regret that you are awake.
That was one of the few things I recalled from my last hospital experience, when I had outpatient eye surgery in late 2000, as I went in for my thyroidectomy on Tuesday. I had forgotten the actual pain that followed the operation — only the memory of not wanting to wake up to it remained.
The sounds come in first, followed by tentatively opening your eyes, closing them again, and wishing you could get back to sleep. I think the first voices I heard after Tuesday's procedure were those of family members visiting me, especially my father, who was very happy to relate that I had not had to have my entire thyroid removed.
The pathology results from the section of the gland that was taken out were inconclusive, so — asked by the surgeon to decide whether I should have a full thyroidectomy — Dad made the call for me to keep the remainder of it, on the chance that it might not be cancerous. The odds given him were sixty-forty in favor of cancer, which is certainly daunting but not overwhelming.
Even if it turns out that I do have cancer — and I should know for certain today — I think my father made the right decision. He asked what the surgeon would do if he were making the decision over his own thyroid, and the surgeon replied that he would opt for retaining what was left of it. The doctor noted that I was in good health and so could stand for a second operation if need be. Moreover, if it turned out the second operation wasn't needed, I would be better off for not having to get the radiation treatment that would have been necessary had my full thyroid been removed.
Somewhere mixed in with the memory of my family's voices, I remember the surgeon coming in and telling me how the operation went. The main thing I gathered from him and my family was that everything had gone very well.
I did not feel pain so much as a generalized sense of discomfort — the whole helpless feeling of being hooked up to an IV, unable to get to a restroom without aid, feeling the need to cough and being unable to get into a position where I could cough, and so on. My neck felt odd for being stitched-up and I wondered if underneath the thick wrap it was being held together with chewing gum and piano wire. It stung where it was stitched, but mostly just felt too tight. It still does as I write this, so I should not stay up too much longer.
It was a great relief to discover I still had a voice, even though my throat was raw. My big fear with regard to the operation was over the small but significant risk that my laryngeal nerve might be damaged.
The one thing that I remember during my first hour of semiconsciousness following the operation, other than the foggy impressiions of my family's and surgeon's visits, is that I had two songs weaving through my head, alternating with one another at odd intervals. The songs ran through my mind very clearly and incessantly. Thankfully, they were so beautiful that I did not want to stop hearing them.
The first, and this is I think the one that was going through my head right when I first came into consciousness, was "Lift up your heads," from Handel's "Messiah," only I didn't hear the title lyric of the aria. Instead, what kept weaving in and out was the call-and-response of the choir, singing, "Who is the king of glory? The Lord of Hosts!"
"Messiah" is one of my favorite pieces of music. At the same time, it was a little odd for that particular aria to go through my head, as it is not one that would normally come to mind. When thinking of Handel's masterwork, I usually think of one of the arias I learned from my high-school choir director, Mr. Fenstermacher, like the "Hallelujah" chorus and "For unto us a child is born." "Lift up your heads" was not among them.
The other song that went through my head was a popular Reform Jewish, English-language arrangement of the Aleynu, a prayer that is sung at the end of every Jewish service. I had heard it in Hebrew a few mornings earlier while attending a Shabbat service with my sister, who is a rabbi and who came out from her home in the Midwest to be with me in advance of my surgery. The version that came to me in the hospital was,
Let us adore the ever living God And render praise unto Him Who spread out the heavens And established the earth And Whose glory is revealed In the heavens above And Whose greatness is manifest Throughout all the earth He is our God, there is none else
I think that one of the reasons the prayer came to mind was because I associated its theme of adoration with another I had heard at the Shabbat service, one that has special meaning to me — the Sabbath Kedushah, which quotes Isaiah's vision of the angels (Isaiah 6:3):
And one would call to the other and said, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory."
That passage is, for Catholics, the essence of the Sanctus, said during the Communion service at every Mass. It is also part of Parashat Yitro, the Torah portion that was read at the service I attended with my sister as well as the rest of Jewish services around the world this past Shabbat.
Funny that, just two weeks earlier, while I was in the audience at Theology on Tap, the speaker, Father David Toups, not knowing I was Jewish, had asked me if I knew the Hebrew word for "holy." (You can hear his shock at my knowing the answer at the 35:10 mark into the podcast of the talk.)
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A few hours later, after Brother Hugh Vincent Dyer O.P., who serves at my parish, prayed over me and gave me Communion in my hospital bed, I summoned the strength to open my Magnificat — the only reading material I had brought besides Fulton J. Sheen's Peace of Soul — to see what was the Church's reading for that day's Mass.
When I saw it, I cried.
The responsorial psalm was Psalm 24, verses 7-10:
R. Who is this king of glory? It is the Lord! Lift up, O gates, your lintels; reach up, you ancient portals, that the king of glory may come in! R. Who is this king of glory? It is the Lord! Who is this king of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle. R. Who is this king of glory? It is the Lord! Lift up, O gates, your lintels; reach up, you ancient portals, that the king of glory may come in! R. Who is this king of glory? It is the Lord! Who is this king of glory? The LORD of hosts; he is the king of glory. R. Who is this king of glory? It is the Lord!
I realized that, while I had been in surgery, priests who knew that I was having the operation were offering Mass for me. Friends and readers of my blog were offering up their prayers while attending the Mass.
And so, the angels, who "call one to another," had put the song in my heart — "Who is the king of glory?"
The Jewish prayer that had come to mind, too, I realized, was a grace that flowed from the prayers sent up by my sister and at least one Jewish reader who, I knew, had been praying for me.
* * *
I later learned that someone else had been praying for me in a special way — my mother, who converted to Catholicism twenty years before I did and who has not practiced the faith for over a decade, having remarried outside the Church (though remaining Christian).
Mom and my stepfather had let me know that I was in their thoughts and prayers and that they were available if I needed them. I had declined their offer to visit — it has been my choice not to see them for some time, for reasons that I won't go into here — but I appreciated that they were concerned about me.
Today, my mother sent me the following story, which touched me deeply in the midst of the unresolved issues between us:
A woman came into our office at the time you were in surgery. I had met her only once, several months ago. She asked me to hold out my hand. She had her hand tightly closed, opening it into my hand. There was an olive-wood rosary in it. She had had this rosary on her night table and had been praying with it every night. She said, "I didn't want to go out today, but I thought that I had to bring this to you, that you needed it." She then went on to tell me that she had received this rosary on a pilgrimage to Medjugorge, and she shared many miracles that had happened to her there. She also shared her devotion to the Lord. I told her that you were undergoing surgery just at that moment, and that I was just at that moment looking for someone with whom I could share my anxious and helpless feeling about it. I told her that you pray the rosary, and she said, "Now you have to pray it for her, because she can't." Although I felt strange doing so, I remembered how to do it, and I prayed for you.
At ten minutes to six yesterday morning, I met my wonderful father, stepmother, and sister in the lobby of my apartment building for the short walk to George Washington University Hospital.
Sis was in town from Cincinnati for the occasion. My mother and stepfather had also offered to come, from New Jersey, but I declined, though I was very happy to receive their care package of a week's worth of soups.
I felt very prayed-for going into the hospital, thanks to my friends and blog pals who had offered to pray for me, and especially thanks to my pastor's having given me the Anointing of the Sick. It was my first time ever having received the sacrament. What is particularly beautiful about it is the way it unites one's suffering's to Christ's. As an admirer of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, I didn't want to have any "wasted pain." Receiving the Anointing gave me the assurance that God would receive my suffering on behalf of my prayer intentions, even if I forgot to keep those intentions in mind while experiencing pain.
Before leaving my place, I had removed my Miraculous Medal and Brown Scapular and placed them in my purse — no jewelry is allowed on the operating table. Wanting to take as many saints as possible with me, I wore my "Chesterton University" T-shirt underneath my sweater and packed Sheen's Peace of Soul into my carrying back.
It was very moving to see how concerned my family was for me, especially my dad. I knew as the intake receptionist put the band on my wrist that my father, who turned 70 last year, could remember the day in 1968 when I wore my first-ever hospital tag.
At the hospital, I enjoyed VIP status, thanks to my father's having worked for the George Washington University Medical School for nearly 30 years. I don't doubt that the care would have been excellent anyway, but it was a great blessing to be surrounded by people who knew and respected my dad. One of the third-year medical residents who was to take part in my surgery told me beforehand that my father was "like a mentor" to him.
It's quite amazing how God works things out. If I had remained in New York City, at my old job, where I was until last June, I would not have received nearly the same level of care at a hospital there, and it never would have occurred to me to attempt to get the procedure done at George Washington University Hospital. Funny how it took a job switch — to a Washington-area position that ended prematurely — to get me to the place where I could get the best possible treatment. (Speaking of jobs, I am very happy to be beginning a new one — more on that when it's confirmed.)
There was very little time yesterday morning when I felt alone. It happened only briefly, after saying goodbye to my folks and following the nurse into the pre-op room, when I was left to put on my gown and slippers. That depressing feeling one gets in the hospital — that of being at others' mercy — was just beginning to hit me, when, for some reason, I looked at the label on the package of slippers, which was hermetically sealed. It read, "Medline Industries, Mundelein, Ill."
The name "Mundelein" jumped out at me. I knew I had read about a Mundelein in Sheen's biography, Treasures in Clay and that he was a bishop, though in my mind at first I had him confused with Bishop Spalding, who prophesied that Sheen would be a bishop himself. Somehow, I knew that the town of Mundelein was named after him. (In fact, it remains home to the seminary the cardinal founded, which I now see is four miles from where the slippers were made.)
Even not quite remembering who Mundelein was — he was in fact the sixth American cardinal, of the Archdiocese of Chicago — I knew for certain that he was a prelate, and that he was of Sheen's home state of Illinois. Just seeing his name printed on that plastic bag at that moment gave me great comfort, especially as I had asked Sheen's intercession before leaving the house that morning. It felt like a sign the angels and the saints were with me. I shed a few tears, half a remnant of fear and half an offering of joy.
* * *
Only after getting home tonight did I learn that there is indeed much to admire about George Cardinal Mundelein's earthly life. Although liberal and a close friend of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he spoke boldly against "Austrian paperhanger" Hitler more than four years before the United States entered World War II.
Cardinal Mundelein also established the Associated Catholic Charities of Chicago, which in turn founded, under his direction, the Misericordia Maternity Hospital. The hospital's purpose was, as the Cardinal said, "for the saving of the souls of the babies." A contemporary biography of Cardinal Mundelein notes that special precautions were taken at the hospital to secure the baptism of the children and protect their right to life.
