I wrote this on my blog a few days after Abe came home:

Discovering the truth about food set me free!   Now I could focus on my family’s freedom from the weight of emotional oppression still looming.

From that day on, all the bloating, all the bowel cramping pain, and all the toxic burps and gas were gone.  And they never came back.  I had changed my diet in strict adherence to Dr. Lundell’s recommendation, and all the pain went away over night.  Is this real?  Is this a dream?  Why didn’t this diet stuff work before?

I had asked the doctor that actually, when he gave me the recommendations two days earlier.  He said my body was in such a state of attack that no drugs or dietary changes could stop the momentum and destruction of the disease at that moment.  There were so many anti-bodies created for my colon cells and my immune system was so compromised that the drugs and dietary changes at that point were like trying to damn up a rushing river with a couple sand bags.

But now with my immune system no longer in full-on attack mode on my colon, my body responded immediately to the change in diet.

And that changed everything for me.  The next day, my energy came back and gained momentum fast.  Soon I was up and around the house.  I spent that week shopping, and cooking, and re-stocking our pantry.  And I got fully onboard with the new regime.  As hard as it was going to be, and as much of an outcast of normal society it would make me, there was no going back to my old way of eating.  The evidence way too personal and way too obvious.  When I eat poorly, I have pain, disease, and potential death.  When I eat well, I feel good, I have energy, and my body recovers.

This seems so obvious, and it is.  But why were all the medical doctors so vehemently opposed to the idea?   I could postulate for a while, but I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.  Suffice it to say, I’m getting most of my advice from Dr. Lundell in the future, and others like him.

It felt so good to finally see legitimate answers and solutions to my issues.  Such a relief to see results!  I now deeply empathize with those who are living with undiagnosed and/or untreatable pain.  The feelings of helplessness and despair can be overpowering at times.  But I know from experience though, that joy can be found in the midst of it all.  There is meaning to be found in everything.  And seeking that, and trusting in our Creator’s infinite love and desire for our well-being, allows us to bridge the gap of despair, and to “against hope, believe in hope”, as Abraham the prophet did (Romans 4:18).

I wrote this in my journal two days later:

Then a few days later I wrote this on facebook:

My body suddenly began recovering amazingly fast, which filled my bucket of hope daily.

But Abe’s emotions spiraled downward each day he was away from us, and his sadness deepened.  Nan and I recharged daily with the confrontation gone from our home.  But every night he begged us to bring him home, bawling uncontrollably, telling us he didn’t want live if he couldn’t come home.

We desperately longed to hold him and comfort him.  Many nights we cried together, agonizing over our son’s pain, but still incapable of bringing him home.  It was pure mercy and grace from God that my body finally began recovering so dramatically that week.  Abe dangled by a thread.

Sunday came and we thought he was improving, until we received this text from my sister:

Nan was ready to fly out and pick him up that moment.  She knew we had to bring him home.  It had helped us immensely having him gone, but it was getting too intense for him.  We felt we needed professional help and fast.

Then just a little while later we got another text:

What a relief!!  Believe me, you do not want to receive a text that your son’s “heart has died“.  Not fun!!  My sister’s sacrifice was absolutely amazing.  She had four young kids of her own, and a foreign exchange student.  But she was infinitely more capable than we were at that point.

The urgency of flying Abe home immediately had passed.  He was safe and clearly not going to harm himself.  He told my sister he just wouldn’t eat so that he would die.  That would last at most until the next meal when he would forget his threat and devour the food with everyone else.   He was safe enough, but we felt it was time to bring him home, because his heart seemed break a little more each day.   Within two days we arranged with my other sister to bring Abe home to us.  He was so happy to be home!  And it was so good to see him happy.

Thankfully, in the 10 days of his absence, my body had made amazing strides in recovery.  When he left I could barely get off the couch, I was totally unfit for effective parenting.

The day he got home I had moved back into sleeping in my own bed for the first time in months, I was completely off the IV nutrition and fluids, and I was actually doing most of the cooking and food preparation.  My energy had dramatically improved.   I was working my way back into being the father figure my kids had known.  My girls already responded wonderfully to the improvements.  Things had nearly normalized in our house.  So the environment Abe came back to was dramatically different than when he left.  His dad no longer looked and acted like he was dying.

He also came back to a vastly different eating regime.  We had completely restocked the pantry and removed nearly all processed foods, all sugar, and anything with wheat.  The day Abe came home was a touching and a tender night.  Abe seemed truly happy again for the first time in months.  After dinner we spent nearly an hour sitting on the couch talking and crying together.  It was our first real connection in months.  I just held him in my arms and didn’t want to let him go.  And he opened up and his true self shined vibrantly.  I knew then he was going to recover.  Though I suspected it would still take time, and professional help, it filled me with hope to see his bright personality.

But the subsequent days he still suffered emotional pain.  His upper lip had a constant nervous twitch and his gaze was unfocused most of the time.  What happened to our son?  Will he ever be the same again?

No.  This had definitely changed him permanently.  But I still believed it would be a change for the best eventually.  I held the vision of him I saw that night in my arms, and I tried to help Nan do the same.  Here and there his true self re-emerged and reminded us he was still there.  I believed we were all experiencing this trial for a good and valuable purpose.  But it stung so bitterly to watch our son’s suffering, far worse than suffering personally.  Maintaining hope required a higher perspective.  We had to try to see him from God’s view, because at times his behavior grew so intense it became very difficult just to interact with him.

What happened to our happy life?  The only possible way to cope was to trust in the promise that “all things wherewith you have been afflicted shall work together for your good” (D&C 98:3).  Somehow everything was conspiring for our good.  But there was no way to see how.  We felt immersed in total darkness.  It required 100% faith.  I had no way of knowing whether Abe would ever be back to normal, and if I allowed myself to dwell on that it was torture.  Especially when I remembered my own role in causing his distress, it was too much to bear.  But attempting to comfort Nan helped pull me out of my own irrational thoughts of fear.  I felt a deep sense of peace despite the turmoil of emotions.  I felt certainty in my heart that somehow we would be restored.

And that feeling gave me hope.

We stopped at a Thai Restaurant for one last hurrah before making a plunge into the abyss of social exile and extreme dietary weirdness for the rest of our lives.  That’s what it felt like anyway.  And that Thai food tasted sooo good.  I ate a ton of it.  I cleaned my plate.  And then another plate.  I thought I might pay for it in pain and bloating…but I couldn’t resist!  I was overwhelmed.  And it was my last time.  I dare you to try to resist eating the whole plate on your last night of Panang Curry in your entire life.  It’s no easy task!  Especially in a weakened emotional state.

It appeared the night may never end, and pain may last forever.  But writing drew the truth from within and acted as a lever.  It pried me from the grasp of fear, and overwhelmed despair.  It lifted me, it comforted, and filled life with fresh air.

There’s a little poem that just popped out for you   I guess I was in ‘poem mode’ as I recalled William Ernest Henley’s immortal poem ‘Invictus’.  It has become a part of my soul and he spoke my feelings best.  His poem gives me courage consistently in dark times.  The truth of the last two lines could not be more empowering, especially knowing he wrote it while recovering from leg amputation from tuberculosis.

That week as the kids were out of school, I actually ventured out to a movie with the family and shopping with Nan.  Wow, a taste of normal life!  But it was not normal of course.  I still had toxic gas and intense bloating coming and going.  And the gas was coming out both ends.  But since the end exiting my stomach was contained in a bag that was not a huge social issue.  Unfortunately for everyone involved, there was no containing the toxic gas coming up out of my mouth.   There is nothing that can describe the nastiness of the burps that were bursting forth, other than toxic gas.  I tried to hold them in, but it was no use.  They could not be stopped.  And on the way home from the movie theater the kids were all groaning and moaning in pain from the stench which instantly filled every crevice of our minivan.   I would have felt bad for them if I weren’t nearly dying from it myself.  Windows down, freezing winter air blowing in was the only way we could survive the drive.

But even still, I was home!  I was with my family!  And certainly this had to pass sometime.  But how?? And When?  It had already been a month since the surgery and I was still having major intestinal and digestive issues.   They told me they had “removed the problem” when they removed my diseased colon!  Well, my problems were clearly not removed.  And that was highly disconcerting to me.

Nan and I discussed frequently whether or not I had been diagnosed correctly.  We wondered, and worried a bit, whether I actually had Crohn’s disease and not just Ulcerative Colitis.  The Doctors were 99% sure I just had Ulcerative Colitis and that the surgery was “curative”.  They love to cure things with surgery!  Isn’t it great?!  We can just cut the bad part out and you’re healed…hurray!!

Ummm….OK Doc.  What about the fact that there is a reason why I got this diseased colon in the first place??  Any idea what that reason may be?  And did we solve the root cause of the issue, or did we just chop out the symptom?

“Well….nobody knows for sure.  It’s a complex issue.   So many variables!  It’s most likely a genetic issue.  Food definitely plays no factor in the cause of your issue.  There is no proof that diet has anything to do with it.  We do know that we have cured the Ulcerative Colitis now by removing your colon.”

It seemed more and more apparent to me that my problems were not gone and my body was not “cured”.  But I kept holding on to the hope that the doctors were right, and it would pass, and I would be OK eventually.  Meanwhile I was still in pain!  I couldn’t sleep at night without taking narcotics to dull the stomach cramping.

Thanksgiving day came and we enjoyed a delicious meal prepared by my siblings.  But sure enough, that evening after eating too much food, and definitely too much of that delicious Marie Calendar’s chocolate mousse cream pie, the bowel pain set in severely.  More bloating.  More diarrhea.  More toxic burps and gas.  More narcotics to try to sleep.

I tossed and turned in my rented hospital bed and woke up frequently.  Wondering if I would ever heal.  Wishing I could sleep in my own bed again with Nan.  Still hooked to an IV for nutrition and liquid each night.  At least by now I figured out how to remove the IV tubes each morning by myself, using my teeth.  A huge success of independence and a step toward freedom!  But am I ever going to recover from this?

Back in September a good friend had referred me to his ‘magic miracle worker doctor’.  He raved about how the guy miraculously knew the solutions to his family’s health challenges.  Every one of his treatments brought satisfactory results.   He was over the top in his testimonial of the man.  I was easily convinced.

I was desperate at the time and open to anything in October.  The traditional, insurance covered medical community wasn’t helping me.  But the first time George’s Doc could get me in, I couldn’t make my appointment.  I had gone to the ER and was stuck in the hospital in mid-October.  I rescheduled.  Then during the next appointment I was nearly unconscious recovering from major surgery in another hospital.  The stars weren’t lining up, but I felt pulled to see this Doctor.  Finally the day after Thanksgiving I was able to keep my appointment with Dr. Lundell.

November 23, 2012 I left Dr. Lundell’s office with a huge bag of natural supplements, a very long receipt for blood tests, stool tests, and the Doc’s time, and nearly $2000 less available credit on my card.  “Well that was an expensive kick in the pants!”  I thought, since natural cure doctors are not covered by most insurance.  “Thanks George!”

Here’s the jist of how the visit went down:

Dr. Lundell:  They did not ‘cure’ you by removing your colon.  You will continue to have problems and pain throughout your life, and you’ll inevitably be back in the hospital for more surgeries if you don’t change your diet dramatically.

Me: Umm…Uhh…OK?  Are you sure?

Dr:  Yes.  Your problem is not just genetic.  And it definitely was not just contained to your colon.  There’s a reason why you’re still in massive pain, bloating, and gas, beyond just recovering from surgery.

Me: Do tell!

He proceeded to lecture me for about 90 minutes on how my immune and digestive system works, and on the reason why I got the disease in the first place.

FINALLY!!!  A physical person in the medical field who will actually admit there is a cause to this stuff!  You have no idea how refreshing it was to hear this, and at the same time daunting and completely overwhelming.  He confirmed everything I had read in many books, which the medical doctors all dismissed as ‘anecdotal’.  And my feelings told me Dr. Lundell knew exactly what he was talking about, and that he was right.

He told me the reason why different types of foods stress the digestive and immune system and why they are large contributors to all auto-immune diseases and disorders.  He confirmed that the causes are indeed complex and many, and that genetics does play a role in what part of the body is weaker or more prone to attack.  But in no uncertain terms he showed me that emotional stressors as well as physical stressors are at the root of the cause of all auto-immune problems.  And he showed me why the food we put in our digestive tract is one of the largest of those stressors.  There are many books and studies on this topic, so I won’t even attempt to go into much detail here because I wouldn’t do it justice.  I will just stick to the basics of what he told me and share with you what happened to me.

In a nutshell, he educated me in general, and then he told me specifically what I should and should absolutely NOT be eating.  He told me in no uncertain terms that I should not be going anywhere near wheat, anything with gluten, all dairy products, all refined sugar, and a bunch of other inflammatory foods such as peanuts and anything in the nightshade family (tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, etc.).  And he told me I should eat only organic foods, and only the highest quality meats that were grass fed, organic, and/or wild caught.  And eat absolutely nothing that had been made with genetically modified ingredients.  Then he prescribed a bunch of supplements including digestive enzymes to aid in the absorption of nutrients, probiotics to help restore good bacteria, and natural anti-inflammatory substances like Aloe and others to aid in healing.

Nan and I were together at the appointment, and his extreme education and recommendations had left us both stunned, bewildered, and in a state of sticker shock.  We had already maxed out our $10,000 medical insurance deductible for the year.

But we felt he spoke the truth.  And he backed it up with nearly a ream of literature that he sent me with for homework.  But it was such hard truth!  I wanted to believe the medical Doctors!  Their way seemed so much easier and more convenient.  I wanted to keep eating Belgian waffles smeared with butter and maple syrup, fruit and whipped cream!  I wanted to eat pizza, and a juicy burger and French fries!  I wanted to eat ice cream and strawberry milkshakes dangit!!!  Am I now doomed to never eating what I want ever again?  The thought was overwhelming.  What about caramels and dark chocolate.  Certainly I could eat those in moderation right?  Nope.  Not according to Dr. Lundell.  I wanted to cry.  I wanted to crawl in a hole and hibernate.  It was daunting for Nan as well.

One of the first things he said to us was: “Sugar is poison.”  And he meant it.  “There is no place in your life for refined sugar.  It is a toxic substance that only damages you and does you no amount of good.”

But I don’t want to be an outcast of society!  I don’t want to have to watch what I eat specifically for the rest of my life and dread eating at restaurants or at friends houses because I don’t know what’s in the food!  I want to be normal!  And all the doctors at the hospital assured me they had cured me and that food has nothing to do with it.

Well, all the medical doctor’s assurances were pointless, because I was still in massive pain and not recovering well at all.  I knew I had to give Dr. Lundell’s advice a complete and honest try.

Things improved it seemed, though slowly.  But there were setbacks.  Each day was different, and our son’s mental well-being brought constant anxiety.

The trauma of my illness, and the emotional distress my words had caused that day in the hospital, created severe repercussions with my son.  He was not his normal, happy, bright, and loving self, and I still felt weight from some of the responsibility for that.  Nan and I cried together every night with broken hearts over our son’s mental state.  Somewhere deep inside there was hope he would recover, but when?  He had totally changed.  He was suffering so badly that he was barely recognizable to us.

He was at home all day since Nan had pulled him out of school, and we lived on pins and needles.  Nan became too scared to leave him in his room alone after finding him lying face down in a pool of his own blood apathetic to the fact that his nose was bleeding all over the place after hitting his head against the carpet.

He told us many times that he wanted to be dead.  It seemed he couldn’t see anything good about being alive.  His face and body were nearly always lifeless, the brightness gone from his eyes.  His entire countenance carried darkness and despair.  Occasionally he could be distracted from his despair, but as soon as the external stimulus was gone, he would sink back into sadness.  We were in turmoil with no idea how to help him.

My continued pain and bloating on top of all this threatened to sever the remaining strands of emotional stability for both Nan and me.  We were both in and out of emotional break downs and depression ourselves.  Generally I felt OK, because just being out of my prison cell of a hospital room was enough to bring me some happiness whenever I thought about it.  The contrast and beauty of just being in the presence of my family, despite the emotional issues, compared to the solitary confinement of the hospital brightened my spirit daily.  But the magnitude of the bleakness of our situation still blocked most of the light.  We could not see an end to the tunnel of suffering we were groping our way through.

Some part of me knew we would see light at some point, even though there was no visible evidence to suggest it.  I still believed this was happening for our good.  But how could this be good?   I’m alive, but doomed to constant and ever changing pain?  And what has happened to my innocent son?

I’ve found that a key to faith is forgetting the ‘how’.  The how doesn’t matter.  It is irrelevant in fact.  And becoming good at forgetting the ‘how’, is precisely ‘how’ to make it through tough times.  Worrying about things that are impossible to see in the moment is useless and detrimental.  I knew without any shred of doubt that all these things were somehow for my good.  I had come to believe that there can be no other way than that, because God would not exist, and therefore I would not exist if it were any different.  So I didn’t have to question that premise.  And if that premise is true, that every single thing that happens to us is for our ultimate good, then it doesn’t really matter ‘how’ it’s going to work out.  I can rest my mind knowing that somehow it will.  Trusting that even though I don’t see the way, and even though it may look impossible from my perspective, that God sees it all, and knows exactly what I need to have joy and ultimate happiness.  I can’t see everything that is coming around the next bend, nor would it be good if I could.

The amount of possibilities in life we can see or even imagine is like a radar screen on a ship.  There are countless things happening across the ocean, but in our ship all we see beyond our immediate proximity is what shows up on our tiny little radar screen.  We can’t see much, a fraction of one percent of everything going on in the vast ocean.  But that doesn’t mean things aren’t on their way into our view soon.  It’s the same in life, as we move forward, new things, people, and circumstances will show up that we could have never even imagined, because they were off our radar screen.  But they will be the very things we need to solve many of our challenges.

We don’t know how it’s all going to work out.  But it always will.  We don’t have to worry about how things are going to happen.  The ‘how’ is almost always off our radar screen.  We just have to trust our feelings, given to us by our creator.  He knows exactly what we need and when we need it.  Everything that has shown up is for our good.  We can learn from it and benefit from it all in some way.   And we can feel the things off our radar screen, even when we can’t see them.  Certainly God sees everything coming our way, and we can learn to be guided by Him through our feelings, rather than only trusting what we see.  ”For we walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7)

So how was Abe being intensely depressed and sad beneficial for him or us?

I don’t know.  I don’t claim to know how it all works.  But I still believe that good will come from it and that even though it was the last thing on earth we could have wanted, there is some benefit to be gained from having experienced it…for him and for us.

But thank you to my wonderful sisters for saving us Thanksgiving week!  Three of my sisters and their entire family’s came to be with us, literally giving us the strength to carry on.  The distraction of having cousins in town to play with was heaven to both Abe and to us.  He got lost in play and became mostly content. Whew!!!  How desperately we needed that reprieve.  And the emotional support from loving siblings recharged our souls.

The ‘felt so good to be home’ part swiftly faded unfortunately.  I went straight to my bed to lie down when I got home.  Nan fed me some chicken, rice and veggies in bed.  And not an hour later my stomach locked up on me again with cramps.  “Oh no!  Not again!”  I attempted narcotics to relieve the pain, but nothing worked.  It got worse and worse as the evening progressed.  Writhing in pain and thrashing around all over the bed moaning.  Nan called the doctor in panic.  “It should go away.” He said.  “See if you can make it through the night, this should pass.  Call me if it gets worse.”

It got worse.  Extreme nausea started its night-shift of torture.  5 hours of agony later at 1:30 AM after barely sleeping at all, a painful and gut wrenching puke fest ensued; somewhat relieving, but totally exhausting.  Now totally dehydrated, I staggered into our tiny master bathroom.  I recall leaning over the toilet to grab a plastic bucket.  Then the next thing I remember is coming to consciousness on my back to Nan screaming at the top of her lungs for help.

She had watched mortified from our bed as my skeletal frame collapsed in a thud against the wall, eyes wide open, mouth gaping, and completely unconscious.  The image apparently gave her nightmares for weeks afterwards.  Frantically she pulled me to the floor as she screamed for her Mom in our guest bedroom.  They called 911 and literally less than 60 seconds later EMT’s were in my bedroom, they just happened to be right around the corner.

I was loaded on a stretcher and hauled off to the ER again.  This time, my three older children, all awake in our front room, looked on in shock and fear as they wheeled me into the frigid night.  My heart ached to see the fear in their eyes, and nothing I could do.  I longed to hold them, to cry with them, to comfort them.  But they were gone.  And I was on my way back to the emergency room for the fourth time in a five week period.  That morning Nan wrote on facebook:

Now back in the hospital but in a much worse hospital wing.  I snuck food into my room by calling a delivery guy for a Turkey Sub.  My new nurse yelled at me for breaking my liquid diet restriction.  This place sucks!  I couldn’t handle the grape flavored sugar, and I was just following what I thought were Doctor’s orders to “Eat everything you want”.  Still in pain, still bloated, and unable to eat anything without pain and heavy doses of drugs, I despaired at the thought of staying another day in the hospital.  But I feared going home and creating more nightmares for my family.  Super discouraged, every day extracted massive willpower from my diminishing reserves just to get through the moments and stave off the negative thoughts.

Depression blurred the days and negativity bombarded me.  I didn’t want to see anyone.  But I knew I needed help to get out of my head.  One morning some loving friends came and I nearly chewed them out for just smiling when I felt so angry at my lot in life.  Thankfully they patiently stayed over an hour.  The light of their presence pulled me out of the darkness.  Another day I wrote this on facebook:

Really, what better course is there than to seek the good in it all?

Amidst moments of dark despair, my Father and I grew closer that night than I had ever felt before.  We held each other, cried together, and prayed together.  My heart filled with peace as I knew somehow the pain would pass, though I still didn’t see the way.  I felt total comfort in the arms of my Father, relying completely upon his love and compassion.  I felt through him the tender love of my Heavenly Father.  I sobbed in gratitude to God for giving me this new ray of hope in my darkness.  My pain and problems were consumed and meaningless in the presence of the light, peace, and joy I felt in my hospital room for an hour that Sunday night.

Other nights Nan crawled into my hospital bed, holding me, crying with me, listening to my fears and concerns, assuring me we would make it through.  I ached each time she left me there.  She was always so patient, so loving, and so tender.  Despite crawling through hell herself, confronted with fears and nightmares of my death and becoming a widow.  Despite my irritability.  Despite her son losing control of his mind and emotions.  Despite feeling lost, out of control, and barely hanging on to hope herself.  Overwhelmed and constantly on the verge of cracking from the weight of it all, yet still patient with me.  And she had her own tender moments of peace as she fed Kelsie and looked into the eyes of her newborn daughter who was oblivious of the storm raging all around her.  Just at peace.  A small piece of heaven and a saving grace for Nan helping pull her through.  Reminding her of God’s love.  Bringing eternal perspective, which brought just enough peace to see her through a few more hours.

After another full week of severely depressing lows and amazing spiritual highs in the hospital, November 14^th I finally came home for good.  And I actually had enough energy to sit at the table and play cards with my son and my Dad!  Still in the mid 130’s though, and looking pretty skeletal.  Abe was happy that day.  He said he had forgiven me, but he was far from recovered from the trauma that had decimated his emotions.  I wrote this on facebook the next week:

There is no way I could list all the amazing acts of love and selfless service that were extended to me and my family during this time.  Each act was immensely appreciated, and gave me energy to continue forward.  This experience opened my eyes to just how loving and compassionate people are inherently.  Daily I received calls, visits, emails, and expressions of love and concern.

One particularly poignant and touching act of love came from a close friend who was and is still dealing with his own chronic, intense pain with accompanied full body convulsions at least every other day.  He had already suffered over 18 months and there was no end in sight for him.  His undiagnosed ailment had completely changed his lifestyle from active and always going, to almost no energy and always suffering pain.

But despite his constant pain, this loving man who I will always call a true friend was in the hospital with me nearly every day for the entire week after my surgery.  He would massage my calves and feet giving such relief to the atrophied muscles.  He read scripture and words of life and positivity bringing me hope and reminding me of the truth.  An amazing blessing in my time of need, I could hardly believe he had the energy to do that for me.  Love in the purest sense, it taught me a new meaning to the word.  I will be forever grateful to him for his compassion.  More than anyone else, this friend truly understood my pain.  I hope to become more like him, he set an example for me to follow the rest of my life.

I think his love for me, and the compassion and service from so many others, contributed to this dream and a blog post I wrote about it:

Life had turned into such an emotional rollercoaster that the new normal was fluctuating many times daily between tears of joy and tears of sadness.  Even though I was filled with so much joy, hope and feelings of love that day, the pain never fully left, always grinding away at me.

Living life in a hospital leaves much to be desired:  all day in a reclining bed, never changing out of a hospital robe, showering only occasionally due to the pain and hassle of it all, staring at the same wall for weeks on end, looking up at a blank TV that I refused to turn on because it could only possibly elicit depression.   And the food!  Terrible!  Repetitive and ironically super low quality.  You would think a place of healing would put at least some focus on healing foods, but definitely not. Even my surgeon acknowledged this irony.

The nurses I had the privilege of being served by were amazing though.  Their tender, loving service, blessed me day and night.  On the night before they sent me home, one of my nurses compassionately talked me off a ledge of insanity for over an hour at 2 in the morning.  I woke up at about 1:30 AM sweating and filled with anxiety, in the middle of a horrible nightmare.  I dreamt I had woken up with a major setback, everything going completely wrong.  My bowels locked down again and I would not be able to go home.  Petrified because everything was worse than ever and I would stay in the hospital indefinitely since there was no solution.

As I woke up in the same place as my dream I couldn’t distinguish dream from reality.  I kept checking myself to see if I was in pain, but I couldn’t tell because the dream seemed so real.  I called for the nurse.  ”Am I OK?  I can’t tell.  Can I still go home?  I feel like everything is horribly wrong!”  I panicked.

After giving me more pain meds, my nurse sat by my bed and just talked to me.  I asked her if she could stay because I couldn’t tell if I was dreaming.  She assured me I was awake and just fine, but I couldn’t quite believe it.  So she stayed and we just talked for over an hour.  I learned of her family, and her background, and how much she adores her now grown up children.  And how much passion and love she has for being a nurse.  I told her of my background, and we discussed philosophies on living happily.  The anxiety left and I fell back asleep.  Just another example of a loving act I will never forget.  People are so good!

That morning after nearly two weeks holed up in my hospital room, I was discharged.  Is that a weird word to anyone else?  Anyway, I couldn’t have been more thrilled when Nan picked me up and took me home!  Seeing my house, my kids, and their welcome home sign filled my soul.  Still moving slow, barely walking, and only weighing 130 pounds, but I was home!!

I wonder, is starving worse than drowning?  I don’t know for sure, but I would guess it is.  Because drowning can only last a couple minutes, and starving can go on for days and weeks even!  It’s a horrible feeling to be deteriorating and feeling your body starving to death.  But after the epic failure of an attempt to eat solid foods, I had reverted to no food at all.  Not even liquid calories.  Nothing.  I couldn’t bring myself to eat.  The fear of pain from eating trumped the pain of starving.  I didn’t get any substantial food into my system for over a week.

On Halloween, they stopped the stomach suction and I drank a cup of apple juice.  I immediately cramped so they started the suction again.  Looks like the tube is staying in!  On the plus side, at least I got to be ‘Crazy tube in the face man!’ for Halloween (As Adam Sandler would have no doubt called me).

I had been begging for nutrition through an IV.  I couldn’t last forever on a diet of ice chips.  Yet despite my obvious pain and inability to eat, the doctors hesitated prescribing it for some reason.  Finally on Wednesday Nan convinced them, but they wouldn’t start the nutrition until the following night at 9 PM.  GROAN!!!  How could I survive another day without any nutrition?

Apparently we can survive longer than we think on just liquid.  But it’s no fun I assure you.  My energy neared empty when a group of eight of my friends came to visit.  So nice to see them, and feel their support and love, but when they asked how they could help, I could only point to my wife’s phone number on the white board.   Speaking was agony.  So tired.  So drained.  I lived solely on the hope of the 9 PM arrival of nutrients.

Finally the nutrition bag came, they plugged it in and I went to sleep.

I slept in peace that night, and felt some hope now that I finally had IV nutrition and my bowels could rest.  The next day I could feel the energy filling me up, like someone had plugged me in to an electric socket to recharge.  Such a huge relief!

My weight registered at 131 pounds that day.  Though I did feel much better suddenly, the road to recovery seemed to stretch off into the distance forever with no end in sight.  But I took solace in the hope that I was legitimately on that road now!

I took this self portrait with my phone that day after they removed the heinous nose tube.

Little more than skin and bone, most of my muscles severely atrophied.  Barely able to walk to the bathroom, and I could only manage that at most once a day.  Otherwise, the nurses emptied my ostomy bag and my portable urinal for me and I just lay there.  But I felt happy.  So grateful to have the nose tube removed, the nutrition pumping in, and my wife’s forgiveness.  What a relief!!  Here’s what Nan wrote on facebook that day:

Thankfully Nan is super optimistic and was already forgetting about her dreadful visit with me on Monday, where she definitely did not “feel uplifted and hopeful”.  My daughter Breanne further enhanced my mood, still beautiful even with a huge nose and no front teeth.  She brings joy to my soul no matter how I am feeling.

The next day my surgeon already pushed me to start eating.  Content to get my energy through the tube, I didn’t want to play with more pain for a while.  But he was adamant, so I started the process, very slowly this time.  I wrote this to my friends:

I wallowed in self-loathing, but it couldn’t last.  I couldn’t die.  I couldn’t vanish.  I already shed every tear inside me.  All that remained was to act.

I called Nan to apologize, but she wasn’t answering.  I left an apology message, begging for her forgiveness.  And I waited, and prayed for a response.  Something to let me know she was OK.  That we were OK.  But nothing came.  She always responds to my texts, and we never let things go past a day in the past.  But nothing.  I checked my phone all night.  I shivered at the fears that I had destroyed our relationship permanently somehow.  Sleepless fits and nightmares that my family left me consumed the night.

Thankfully, day follows night.  And light dispels darkness.  As the sun rose on the next morning, my physical pain had vanished.  And along with the light of the day, a small ray of hope lit my soul when I saw this email from Nan.  It turns out neither of us slept that night:

My wife is amazing!  I am so blessed to have such a strong, faith-filled, patient woman as a companion.  I don’t know of anything in life that compares to the feeling of loving companionship.  Those words of faith and support relieved my tension significantly.  But the injury remained.  I had clearly hurt my son and hurled him farther down the path of depression.  It stung fiercely to think on it.  I wrote this in reply:

Her email eased my agony, but all day I called and texted with no response, desperately waiting in silent torture for a call from Nan.  Finally, hearing her voice that evening brought immediate tears and relief.

After she called I sent this email to my son:

My heart ached all day for Abe.  Nan was strong enough to understand I was not myself and I didn’t mean harm.  She could cope with it somewhat.  But Abe was now fully depressed and despondent because of my actions.  The weight of guilt and shame pressed down and covered me all day with claustrophobic anxiety.  I just hoped that my email could comfort him somehow.

Later that evening Nan and I exchanged the following texts:

Whew!!  Life is a rollercoaster ride!  And I think Winston Churchill gave the best possible advice to follow during the Hell portions of that ride:

(For clarity, in case you are just now seeing these posts…this is the middle of my story from 2012 that I’m writing.  to start at the beginning, click on the link above and you can scroll through the posts in order with the links at the top and bottom of each page.  Enjoy! (Or cringe, whichever feels more natural to you at the time;))

I was in no position to be helping anyone in the state I was in.  I could barely talk this morning, let alone relate properly with people.  And I was certainly in no position to be effectively and lovingly parenting.  But for some reason (the natural fathering instinct I suppose) I felt compelled to step in and help Nan discipline Abe that morning.  Rather than helping though, my actions became the final straw to break the camel’s back and initiated a tsunami of intense emotional suffering that assaulted me and most of my family, and felt like it would dash us all to pieces.

I was not my normal, capable self.  I was a different person.  The drugs, the pain, the starving, everything combined to change me dramatically.  And despite the fact that it breaks my heart in half and brings tears to my eyes every time I think of this, I feel I need to share it.

Nan and Abe hadn’t been there long at all when I asked Abe why he refused to go to school.  A power struggling debate ensued.  Abe defiantly stated that we can’t force him to do anything and refused to go to school anymore.  To which I responded that maybe we couldn’t force him, but we certainly could take away all his privileges.  With that threat, he made some threats of his own.  If we took his things away he would purposefully make our life harder and do nothing we asked.  My blood boiled as the tension rose and the struggle mounted.  “How could he say such a cruel thing…seeing the condition his parents were both in?”  I thought.

But he was obviously fighting for survival himself.  This experience of watching his Dad wither away and nearly die, completely change personalities, and virtually vanish as a father figure had highly traumatized him.  But in the heat of that moment, I lashed back with something like “if you don’t want to live by the rules of our house, then we’ll just put you up for adoption and you can go live with someone else!”

Immediately he shoved his face into his Mom’s coat and started sobbing.

What did I just do??  Did I actually say that?  Nan was visibly shocked and moving quickly toward rage that I had just been so cruel.  Trying to help, I hurt the people I loved most.  Nan nearly burst into tears and couldn’t stay.  She picked up Kelsie, gave me a deserved look of disgust and resentment, and shuffled Abe out the door.

I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

Mortified, I couldn’t believe I had said such a mean thing to my son in that commanding, cruel way.  There was no love in my action, only pain, fear and an attempt to somehow force something to change.  I had just dropped an atomic bomb on my family that would prove the cause of intense suffering and pain for us all.  I sobbed in my bed uncontrollably, every ounce of remaining energy consumed by deep regret.

I had just broken my son’s heart, who I supposedly loved so much, who was so scared and fragile.  I had treated him with utter contempt and hatred.  And I had broken my angel wife’s heart and let her down in the very moment she needed more support than ever.  Now my heart threatened to explode.  Come on!  I thought we were past the explosions?

Within an hour after they left, my abdomen and remaining intestines launched into an intense cramp session.  My bowels completely locked down like they were knotting up around themselves in a permanent contraction.  Then intense nausea set in and tormented me for the next four to five hours.  I begged the nurse for some relief…some drug…something to stop the intense pain.  But the pain killers weren’t stopping any of the pain.  Sweating and moaning, my heart agonized and despaired over the pain I just caused my family.

Physical torture combined with emotional despair.  I had no faith or positive thinking reserves left to pull me through this time.  I felt like I was nothing.  I thought it might consume me.  I wished it would in fact.  I wished I could not exist somehow that afternoon.

But I couldn’t cease existing of course, so I suffered.  Finally after hours of nauseous cramping pain I started puking.  But every convulsion felt like a knife slicing open the eight inch incision in my stomach from surgery.  Thankfully the stitches and glue held firm.  I vaguely recall 5 or 6 people in my room trying to clean and help me.  I was in a daze, moaning in pain, with puke everywhere.

Once the wretching and cleanup had passed they decided I needed a tube in my nose to pump out my stomach and intestines.  They tried jamming it in my right nostril, thwarted by my screaming and thrashing.  The left nostril brought even more screaming and thrashing and now blood running out my nose.  Back to the right nostril demanding that I hold still.  Someone please have mercy on me!!

Finally they forced the tube in my right nostril and the agony ended.  Within 20 minutes the pain, bloating, and cramping went down dramatically.  Thank you.  Thank you.  A reprieve.  I can breathe.  But oh wait…now I can think again.  I don’t want to think! No!!

Canadian Museum of Nature

That night nothing consoled me.  I was not wondering how this might turn out to benefit me, far from it.  I had cracked.  Reason, logic, and hope had left the building.  Enshrouded by a thick blackness of regret and self-loathing, and feeling run over by the physical torture, I hated myself.  Something I had not felt for a long, long time.  So disappointed in my action, I wished so badly I could take it back it was nearly unbearable.

I wished to be extinct.  Being alive was just too painful to fathom anymore.