'Twas the Night Before Surgery

Well, my dear friends, tomorrow is the day. At 6am, I'll check myself into my local hospital, fork over $200 for a little down-payment on my deductible, and succumb to anesthesia & The Knife. (Or is it knives? I mean, how many little sharp instruments does a surgeon HAVE??? At least 14, I'll bet. Yeah. 14 sounds good.)

I'm nervous, guys.

I'm now ashamed to admit that I've always been ever-so-slightly scornful of people who are nervous about an upcoming surgery. (I mean--routine surgeries like having your gallbladder removed--not stuff like open heart surgery, or brain surgery, or toe surgery, or other serious stuff like that.) I'm glad that I'm having surgery myself now, so I know what it means to be nervous before going under, even knowing that things will likely be entirely okay. I mean, it's my BODY that they're going to be cutting into, y'know? That place where I live. I'll come awake missing a piece of me.

Plus, I will hurt.

Man, I'm such a baby.

Urgh! And this is so not the tone I intended to have in this post. You see, I've been thinking a bit about having surgery, and about finally being able to sympathize with people going through similar experiences, and I've realized that a lot of what we go through in life is geared to help us understand suffering that other people have to go through. Having this surgery will enable me to grasp, just a little bit what someone with a more serious surgery is going through. I'll be able to offer more sympathy, more real understanding to that person, because I'll have felt it myself, even if to a lesser degree.

I came into this world knowing so little, and I've spent the majority of my life thinking that I knew a great deal. So coming into these life experiences, I'm finally gaining just a small bit of knowledge, but these small bits are teaching me how much of life is still beyond my understanding, and I'm so grateful for that. Now, I hope, I should be a bit slower to make hasty judgements or assesments of people I don't know, and be a little more kind, have a little more empathy.

God teaches us so much through the experiences in our lives. I'm learning so much by living! And I still have so much living to do.

So, until I return a gallbladder-less self, I bid you all a (brief) farewell. And I really do love you, you know (no matter what we've been through in the past and perhaps because of all that we've been through). You're all wonderful.

Well, see you on the other side!