Another day, another procedure, another tension filled wait.

There’s a strange mixture of silence and buzz that happens in a hospital cafeteria.  It’s not really a silence, but a nervous calm. Hard to describe, but a feeling I’ve become accustomed to with all the times I have waited while Mike is getting one procedure or another or simply just recovering. There’s a low hum of doctors and nurses grabbing a quick coffee as they pass through or the clicks of a key board where somebody is tapping away. An occasional laugh or sneeze or a muffled conversation of a visitor on their cell phone. But underneath it all is a stillness, like everyone is holding their breath in unspoken solidarity.

I’m sitting at a little table with 3 empty chairs next to me. Drinking an iced tea and eating a ham & cheese wrap that I barely remember ordering. I was reading a book that I brought along and then realized I had no recollection of anything I read, even though I read the same page twice.

I finished my lunch and moved to the family waiting area. Just 30 minutes ago, the nurse came into the prep area where Mike and I were together, and took him downstairs to the cardiac catheter lab. I’m picturing him in a sterile room, machines and monitors beeping, while the doctor directs the wire through his arteries and watches the dye going through them on the monitor screen. The last time Mike had this done in 2021, was after I had waited a short time in the waiting room of a doctor’s office while he had a stress test. I expected the nurse to wheel him out or see him walk out after a half hour or so and we’d be on our way, but instead, the nurse came out, told me he had 95% blockage in 3 arteries and needed to have stents put in immediately. He was quickly moved to another room, prepped and whisked off to the operating room. He did well with that procedure and I’m praying today finds no blockages and he will be ok. The recent scans he has had were inconclusive and that is why this cardiac catheter was ordered.This  procedure usually has few complications, but they won’t know until they are in there whether another stent may be necessary or if he’s good to go. I’m trying to keep the faith and not be nervous but Mike is in the poorest health of his life right now and complications are not new to him. Anything he has done is a bit nerve racking.

There is a man in the waiting room, sitting a few chairs away from me, he’s reading a book and I wonder if he too has read the same sentence, paragraph or page over and over as I did. I wonder who he is waiting to hear about? I just stopped typing this blog for a minute to quietly pray that he has a sense of calm, that his thoughts don’t wonder on the what ifs the way mine have here and there. I prayed that whoever he is waiting for will have a good outcome, just like I prayed for Mike.

There is a helplessness in this kind of waiting. You give your trust to strangers in scrubs and hope they treat the one you love as their own. I do know God is in control though and I prayed he would guide the surgeon’s hands. I prayed several times before they took him, again in the elevator, again in the cafe and a few times in the waiting room. I don’t think God minds the repetition, I know he understands what it means to have a heart stretched thin by love and fear at the same time.

My “Peanuts” theme ring tone rang out, breaking up the eerie silence of the waiting room, I answered quickly to eagerly hear the outcome. The doctor said Mike did very well (Thank God), he did have a 90% blockage in the artery between the other ones that already have stents. They placed a fourth stent and he has to go back on Plavix. The good news is, the 3 previous stents look great. 

Another phone call from Marcia, Mike’s nurse, she told me to meet her  at the double doors where she left me last and she’d bring me back to where Mike was recovering. I followed her down the hall, through the locked door that she opened with her badge. She pulled the curtain back and there he was, my love. A bit pale, maybe a bit sleepy, wires connected to leads on his chest to the monitor above his head. He had the crease in his forehead, above his eyes and nose that tells me when he’s in some pain, but there he was, his blue eyes with heavy lids, assuring me that once again, God answered prayer and Mike is still with me, on this side of Heaven. Whew…I can breathe again. 

All the tension I didn’t even realize I was carrying, seemed to leave my body as soon as I saw his handsome face. I pulled up a chair beside him. The nurse gave him some ice water and pain medication, a warm blanket and, a warm smile as she left, closing the curtain behind her. I sat in the chair next to him, I can hear a little quiet chatter from the nurses at the nursing station, the clicking of his automatic blood pressure cuff and the beeping of the monitor but, all I can focus on is the rise and fall of his chest. The breathing I prayed for, a rhythm I will never take for granted. My back aches, sitting in the uncomfortable folding chair, but it’s no sacrifice. About 2 more hours in recovery and we will be heading home. Thank you Jesus!

“I waited patiently for the lord; He turned to me and heard my cry.”-Psalm 40:1

That verse echoed in my head while I sat there watching him sleep. we are on the other side of fear now, because of God’s grace. It’s the kind of peace that doesn’t really make sense after all the tension of the day, except that God was with us through this, another storm.

Only God knows what tomorrow will hold. We are still in the middle of a long road with other appointments, tests, procedures and unknowns ahead, but right now, I sit here watching him peacefully sleep.

I am grateful!