Hearing “I don’t want to alarm you, but” will always alarm me. Wouldn’t it alarm you? Last Tuesday morning, while working on a Bible study handout for Romans chapters 4 and 5, I received a phone call from my oncologist’s office with those words.
The nurse said, “We just got a call from the radiologist reading your scan from yesterday. It looks like you have a pulmonary embolism in your right upper lobe and another in your right lower lobe. I don’t want to alarm you, but this can be very serious, so you need to go straight to the ER.”
Since I only have one lung left, hearing that there were such things in it alarmed me plenty, as did being sent to the ER. I left the Bible study handouts on my desk, along with the five bulletins I needed to proofread. The newsletter I needed to write. I chose the ER closest to me, at the same hospital that houses the cancer center where my oncologist practices. I’ve spent plenty of time in hospitals in the past four years, but being admitted through the ER was new for me, vs. being admitted from surgery, and I don’t recommend it.
Turns out I have a blod clot in one leg, and two bits of it went into my lung. The initial plan was for me to be in the hospital overnight while I got started on blood thinners, but my heart had other ideas. I ended up staying three nights and left not only with new blood thinner meds but additional heart medication. Now I’m adjusting to both of those and am temporarily off the Super Cancer Med that I’ve been on since last May. Perhaps some of those side effects will start to fade, but with the new pills I have some spectacular bruising on my right arm from all the IVs and jabs.
One of the prayers in my upcoming book with Samantha Vincent-Alexander lamented the lack of lung metaphors in the Bible. The Bible includes a lot about breath, but not lungs, which makes me feel lonely sometimes as a lung cancer patient. Hearts, on the other hand, show up all the time in the Bible. In today’s readings for the fifth Sunday of Lent, for example, two of the four readings mention hearts: from the Old Testament reading from Jeremiah 31, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” And from Psalm 51, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Hearts even show up in the collect of the day: “our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found.”
While I’m frustrated by my continued medical journey, I am grateful that the Bible mentions hearts often. Per the collect of the day, I hope I can fix my faulty heart on true joy. I am supposed to go on a retreat tomorrow with three friends from seminary, and all of the doctors who were seeing me in the hospital—my oncologist, a cardiologist, and the hospitalist—asked me to stay home from church today but to proceed with the retreat. My heart looks forward to connecting with these three friends. We used to be a group of five, but one died in 2022, which caused the rest of us to make solid plans to see each other again soon. We went on retreat together once a year the first four years or so after seminary, then used to talk about it from time to time, but busyness always got in the way. Diane’s death made us prioritize our time together, and my issues the past four years have also shifted my priorities. My heart trusts that we will get to connect and pray and write, and that while we do so, God will write on our hearts.
Wishing you all much joy in your hearts.
Blessings,
Elizabeth
What I’m Reading:
Such a Fun Age: Recommended by my friend Shea Tuttle. Loved it.
The Drowning Woman. Thriller from the library.
Radiant Heat. Yep, another thriller.
My Murder. Another thriller, but with an intriguing and unusual premise.
What I’m Writing:
Lent 1 shorter essay: Wrote about John the Baptist, subject of my upcoming fourth book. My seminary buddy Steve Pankey referred to me in a sermon as “a noted John the Baptist fangirl.”
Lent 2 shorter essay On Psalm 22.
My sermon from last Sunday (Lent 4) hasn’t posted yet, as I had not yet edited and sent the PDF to the parish administrator when I received my “alarming” phone call.
Book Stuff:
Please preorder a copy of Irreverent Prayers: Talking to God When You’re Seriously Sick, which comes out July 2. I longed for a copy when I was in the hospital last week, and prayed some of the hospital prayers as best I could remember them.
I got a charge this month seeing a copy of Unexpected Abundance: The Fruitful Lives of Women Without Children in the local library (Midlothian branch, which houses the local authors collection). Now I want someone to check it out so that it is not there the next time I look for it!
That’s along the lines of “I don’t want to alarm you but there’s a giant poisonous snake coiled at your feet”. Glad it had a good outcome!
What a beautifully written article. I am soo soo sorry you had to go through all that! Thank you for sharing your journey with us. You are in my prayers...and I am so excited for yours and Samantha's next book to come out!