On Your Mark...

We arrived in Cleveland around 10:00pm Monday night. We weren't able to leave quite as early as we had hoped. I had to make an unplanned stop to see my dentist at the last minute (stupid tooth), so we got a bit of late start. The trip down was completely uneventful, just the way we like it.


After a poor night's sleep, we got up to a smoggy Cleveland sunrise, and headed out to the hospital for our 11:00 appointment. Tina spent a couple of hours getting poked, swabbed, and submitted the contents of her bladder for testing to make sure she was good to go for surgery tomorrow morning. We haven't heard anything from the hospital so we assume we've got the green light for tomorrow.

Tomorrow we need to be to the hospital by 6:15. She will be taken to pre-op where she'll get her IV and that lovely hospital apparel - oh yeah - and get her head shaved. From there she'll be given her general anesthesia and taken down for an MRI which the surgeon will use to know where to insert the electrodes. I think the procedure is fairly quick and then she'll go into recovery for a few hours and then over to the EMU (Epilepsy Monitoring Unit). This is where we'll spend the next 7 days as they monitor the electrodes for data to inform the surgeon as to what part of Tina's brain is causing the seizures.

Please pray that Tina's brain will produce adequate and accurate data from which the doctors can make a proper assessment. Please also pray for our children. We got a call from Meg last night about 11:00 wanting us to come home. She misses Tina and is already counting off the days before we'll be home - to her it feels like an eternity.


Tina is still doing well with the reality of surgery tomorrow morning, although maybe a bit more nervous than before. I find myself much more on the anxious side of things. As we talked with the surgeon's nurse and she ran us through what to expect for the next two weeks I must admit that I am not without my worries. It is not an easy thing to think about your wife with a big zipper going down the center of her head from her forehead to the back of her neck.


There is true comfort in knowing that it is in God's plan for Tina to be a zipper-head (sorry if that sounds insensitive but... well... get over it), at the same time there is the reality that this world is also full of pain and difficulty and no sane human ever relishes being in the middle of those painful and difficult circumstances. So lest this sound more "spiritual" than it is, know that I am still learning to follow what my Lord's half-brother said when he encourages us to "consider it pure joy...whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." (James 1:2-4)


It is my desire to be mature, complete, lacking nothing, but I must admit that I still have a way to go because I'm not sure that I can look at my path or Tina's path for the next two weeks and consider it pure joy. I trust my God and I believe he is good and that he will use these trials to make me into the man he wants me to be, but I am not sure I can stand on this side of this trial and consider it joy. However, I do believe that there will be a day, with God's help, that I will be able to look back and joyfully recognize God's sovereign hand upon Tina and my life as we enter into the reality of brain surgery tomorrow.