As Halloween 2024 quickly approached last week, I should have known that an adventure was in store. See, 10 years ago during this same week in 2014 was when my FIRST surprise surgery occurred. I showed up to work at Chick-fil-A on a Tuesday with a slight pain in my stomach. After the pain increased on Wednesday it was reaching a fever pitch come Thursday. I left work midday hunched over and headed to the doctor, who quickly shared his quick diagnosis: Appendicitis. “Go over to the hospital and have them check you out” he said, and I immediately complied. 

The nurse over at the hospital said that the doctor would want to talk to me soon. Then, much to my surprise, they told me to put a gown on. “Why do I need a gown just to talk to the doctor?”. Oh well, whatever works. 10 minutes later the doctor came in and said “Yep we have to roll you into surgery immediately”. SURPRISE! I texted my dad and said “Uhh so they’re taking me into surgery now”, and then passed over my phone and belongings to a nurse and off we went. The immediate response text of “WAIT WHAT? What hospital are you at?!” was never received, and I woke up post-op to nurses in their holiday costumes and a father who had driven up, called around, and found me before the anesthesia had worn off. HAPPY HALLOWEEN! 

So 10 years later, after well over a full year of dull symptoms which now had become a landslide of head spinning, shortness of breath, and borderline inability to function on a day-to-day level, Halloween was a week away and the doctors were ordering scans to further investigate the issue. I woke up on Wednesday, got ready, and headed off to work like usual without much thought about the CT scan that I had undergone the afternoon before. A bit of a weird thought hit me that morning as I read the Bible verse: “But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God”. I prayed for a moment, set this as my phone reminder for the day, and then walked into work. 

3 hours later, I found myself again sitting in the same hospital as 10 years prior, with doctors looking inside me, clearly measuring something on the screen. “This can’t be good”. They said that more info was soon to come, but that they needed to move towards admitting me due to a mass in my heart. SURPRISE! A few hours later, the heart surgeon grabbed me and listed out the fact that this mass was the size of a golf ball and that it was blocking most of the blood flow through the left side of my heart. He was shocked that I had not been passing out and shared that I easily could have just killed over in an instant due to this growth which was significantly blocking blood flow. 

A mere 40 hours later, I was again being rolled into a major surgery that I had in no way seen coming. In the end, the surgery was successful and the mass was actually the size of an egg. We are still waiting to hear what exactly it was that was growing inside me, but it was clear that it had been there for a long while and that it was no laughing matter.

A thousand questions

If you have ever experienced a major surgery, you will know exactly what I am talking about here. Surgery puts you in a weird mental place. Questions abound, like “What if I go under and then never wake up? What if something goes horribly wrong? What about my family, who will provide for them? How would me passing away impact my sons? Did I just speak to that person for the last time ever? What kind of legacy, impact, am I leaving behind if this is it? Was I fair in how I treated other people, pushing them to be their best but still being kind and caring? What will people say about me at my funeral? Will it matter to anyone if I am gone?”. 

Hundreds of more questions like these swirl through your head, but you want to keep them to yourself in an effort not to burden the people closest to you. Entering a major surgery puts you in a really focused zone where things are more clear than they tend to be otherwise. There’s almost no real way to describe it, you just have to live it.

A few musings

Now that the anesthesia has fully worn off, here are a few simple takeaways that have come to me so clearly after surprise surgery #2:

1. We are not guaranteed tomorrow. While every person “knows” this, I often forget this and act like I can and will live forever. Whether it be a mass in the heart, a car wreck, or any other number of things, each of our days are numbered, and we rarely wake up thinking that today could actually be the last day.
2. What comes after death? Again, a question that we spend a surprisingly low amount of time and energy answering. Either SOMETHING is coming our way, or NOTHING. It’s so vital that we get this one right. I am certain that I am at peace with my Maker. What about you? I personally take this one very seriously and am putting my trust in God’s Son Jesus alone and have “assurance of things hoped for, conviction of things not seen”. 
3. Health must be such a priority. Smoking, drinking, eating excessive amounts of unhealthy food, drinking sodas and energy drinks, the list goes on and on. Our bodies are made up of what we consume. When our minds consume garbage, we begin to turn into this. When our bodies are being filled with garbage, it’s not a question of IF but a question of WHEN we will pay the price. Supply meets the demand and just because an enormous amount of garbage is available, it in no way means that we should live off of it.  Live a life of taking “vitamins” now so as to avoid emergency surgeries and medications in the future. 
4. Those who you love are those who matter. We can spend excessive time and concern trying to please people who we are not even an afterthought to them. In a life crisis, you look around and quickly see who the people are who love you and are there for you no matter what. Family, close friends, close people at work, etc. Your network of people who truly value you is made up of these key relationships. Everything else is just peripheral and does not deserve to dominate your life’s mind.
5. Success must be carefully defined. No amount of achievements or possessions seem to matter when you’re lying in a hospital bed with a stranger shaving your body before rolling you into emergency surgery, trust me on this one! We must be careful to define success in a healthy, valuable way. Increasingly for me, I ask “Am I glorifying God? Am I loving and serving the people in my path well every day? Am I trying to give or trying to get? Am I healthy? Am I giving too much control of my time and emotional wellbeing to any other person?
6. Things like money and insurance matter. There is a more recent push to find a job that fulfills you and lets you do what you love every day. This can be a really good thing, and each person definitely should seek to find the intersection of what they enjoy, what they are uniquely great at, and what people will pay them money for. Let’s be aware though that this is a recent historical phenomenon, and the base purpose of a job is to provide for financial needs. My grandfather didn’t work in a steel plant because he loved it. He did it to pay the light bill and to buy food. We are extremely blessed to be in an economy that can allow for BOTH enjoying work and providing! Let’s all push to live out our purpose every day, but be careful to still properly prioritize important things like reasonable income and insurance. One key to success in life is simply not burning to the ground financially.
7. Excellence matters. Most jobs become mundane for most people over time. This comes as no surprise, and it’s understandable. But when we zoom out and think about the impact that we can have on others, either positively or negatively, this should motivate us to do our best work possible every single day. I can’t imagine how hard it is to work in a hospital for 12 hour shifts day after day. But when individuals understand the impact that they can have when they do their work in a caring, competent manner…it makes all the difference in the world. Medical crises are terrifying. To have a nurse/doctor step in and ask how you are doing, pray with you, tell you that they will do everything in their power to get you back to your family alive…it MATTERS! And the same is true for the person changing the oil in a family’s car, the person handling someone’s taxes, or the person putting a fast food order in a bag. Doing things with quality and excellence has a value in and of itself. But beyond that, the positive impact that is accomplished when someone does their work to the best of their ability is incalculable.

Until next time

While there could be 100 more takeaways from my second surprise surgery, I will leave it at that for now. I am ecstatic to soon be functioning at a level of 100% health. No more fighting to survive the day, no more forgetting basic facts like the names of people who I have worked with for over a year. Life, health, time…these are all gifts that each of us are given. I know exactly the type of steward that I will choose to be with all that I have been given!

Here’s to hoping for no more surprise surgeries. Check back in around Halloween week of 2034.