The Histrionics of Healing

The creativity and theatricality of how God goes about doing what He's about.

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Class was over. I had to say my niceties and get my act together before Jane and her Surgeon Husband ran out the door. Luckily, they dallied. As I recall there was an absent shoe. Another miracle.

God gets timing.

As Jane’s Surgeon Husband went shoe searching, I took Jane aside and trepidatiously explained my dilemma. I remember fumbling incomplete sentences like:

“These fibroids… really bad… another doctor… I have the report… just wondering if you or your husband wouldn’t mind….” What eloquence.

All the while so worried I was doing the equivalent of overstaying my welcome in someone’s home after a nice dinner.

I finally must have made myself clear enough because Jane suddenly (almost cutting me off), with great southern charm, flipped her body away from me, and in the authority only a husband’s wife can, with arm held high in summoning fashion and an understanding urgency beckoned her husband:

“Honey? C’mere!”

My heart melted. The chills began.

She explained to him with much more clarity than I could muster the problem that must be solved for their music teacher. Music was saving the day.

This gentleman walks over to his laptop, (he had a lap top with him? I just remember the door swinging open in slow motion and him walking in with the holy spirit wind blowing in behind him), and put my fibroid disc on the screen.

By this time everyone was gone, and I was essentially being given a private consultation in the music studio.

The generosity!

He read the report and told me what I already knew. That it was not good. That it, in fact, was really not good at all.

BUT.

He knew a doctor who worked with him who specialized in robotic surgery for women. Then Jane and Surgeon Husband both began to tell me the story about how this doctor saved the Jane’s life when delivering their baby. The very girl I was singing to weekly. By the time they finished their story it was as if they were trying to convince me I’d be okay with him as my surgeon and all I was thinking was – You had me at helloooooooo!!!

By this time I was so used to something going wrong that I had to tell them then and there that I was an actress/teacher and had no real health insurance. I didn’t want them to put the surgery cart before the medical bill horse.

“Don’t worry about that. This is a good man. We’ll figure something out.”

What. Who - are these angelic aliens? Where did they come from? Is… is Texas taking care of me?

He gave me his card. Then he told me he was going to call the doctor for me, not to worry if he doesn’t call right away, that they would be in touch. Don’t lose hope.

We all left the building. I told you this was on Ash Wednesday. And it only just now occurs to me the symbolism of the ashes on this day in my life. I drove that night to my RCIA¹ class and Mass. I drove in a daze of unbelieving belief. I drove wondering when this doctor would call. I drove wondering if he would ever call --- when the phone rang. Not twenty minutes after my music room consultation.

It was the nurse of Dr. Goodman² to schedule my first appointment.

Well played, Lord. Well played.

But the chess game had only just begun.

I arrived that same evening and sat behind my RCIA director at Mass. I was so excited. I had to tell her what had just happened. For by this time she and the other members of the class were aware of my dilemma. I tapped her shoulder, and she turned around and introduced me to her husband sitting beside her whom I’d never met.

“I have to tell you something amazing after Mass!”

When Mass was over, I relayed to her the unfolding of events that had happened to that point.

When I had finished her husband asked me who these doctors were. I told him their names.

“I know them both,” he said.

Then more dominoes began to fall and the chess pieces began to zoom across the board.

He tells me he happens to be the president of the hospital where they perform their surgeries.

Check.

Knight crushes pawn.

He made jokes about how I need to tell him if they misbehave.

Then he stopped joking and said, “When you get everything scheduled come to me and I’ll make sure those costs are driven down.”

Checkmate.

Now is a good time to mention that this was a different church than the church next door as previously related. Somewhere along the line I’d felt a nudge to join a different parish. Glad I listened.

Ash Wednesday. Would my fibroids become ashes in my life and a new welcome flabby stomach be reborn? Is this actually a possibility?

Annie went with me to the appointment. The appointment that had come in with the wind of the Holy Spirit. The appointment that swept in through a door with the word “surgeon” on a pocket. The appointment that was filled with hope, perhaps too much hope, of where what was supposed to be a chance to make things right, failed miserably. Would I have to hear the same news? Would this doctor also be found sharpening the machete?

Dr. Goodman, at first glance, was a gentle and kind soul. He was skilled as previously noted in detail by Jane, the nurse practitioner momma/student in music class. I was grateful Annie was there, for I knew too well that I was in danger of forgetting anything he said and needed that extra support. For so much hope and disappointment was hanging in the balance.

I remember him patiently explaining while he sketched on a white board with a red marker exactly what was going on in my uterus and why it had reached…er… critical mass. That was the day I first heard him say,

“Your uterus is now the size of a six-month pregnancy.”

Not a baby.

I remember him saying he couldn’t, nay wouldn’t, make promises.

BUT. (And the scales tilt…)

He’d schedule an MRI to see exactly what is going on in there, where they are, how many, and just how big they’ve gotten. (Gulp) Step one.

Because I couldn’t help but believe that this was possible and I was apparently willing to do anything to thwart God’s plan for my happiness and healing, I told him I had no health insurance.

But God will not be thwarted.

He told me that he wouldn’t charge me anything for the doctor’s visits and that when I came to the surgery, well, something would be “worked out” and that, in fact, he had plenty of patients who did have insurance and who could afford it. That would make up for it.

Is this really unfolding this way? Annie and I just fell humbly silent in gratitude.

Someone recently told me of a quote:

“No” from someone doesn’t mean you shouldn’t necessarily do it. It just means you shouldn’t do it with them.

I began to feel this about Dr. HAAM.

Have you ever been in an MRI tunnel? You know that big moaning groaning high tech tunnel with red beams shooting everywhere… the one where you’re not supposed to move or, at times, breath for at least (at least) half an hour?

That.

That’s what came next. I did pretty well in there. Just sort of surrendered in there. I mean what else at this point could I do? I was at the mercy, and had been for a long time, of God - showing himself.

Thank God he’s a merciful God.

When the report came back, the one word that the radiologist used to describe the great gremlin party going on inside me would speak volumes.

Histrionic.

And he didn’t even know I was an actress.

1. Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, a Catholic class where you learn what Catholics (actually) believe and all about the Mass. It is the first step in discernment for entry into the Catholic religion.

2. Name changed.