There comes a time in a person’s life when they find themselves flat on their back in the emergency room, staring up at those big fluorescent lights, and thinking: Well, this wasn’t on the schedule today.

That was me, lying there, clutching my head, convinced it was about to explode. The nice people in scrubs do a few tests, rule out the exploding head theory, and give me some meds to calm down whatever is going on. A few minutes later, I notice my legs start to twitch (without permission, I might add). 

The twitching comes in waves that are getting bigger. A busy woman in scrubs comes in and notices it. She tells me it looks like I might be having a reaction to one of the meds, and that it might get worse before it gets better, but it usually calms down after a while on its own. She doesn’t want to further define what constitutes a while, and I’m not sure I want to know, but she says she’ll check back with me soon.

The twitching graduates, in my non-professional opinion, to full-body convulsions. If I focus hard, I can get them to calm down for a few second, but it’s hard to focus on account of the aforementioned head on the verge of exploding. After what seems like an hour, I wonder where the busy nurse is (non-exploding heads, I learn, are low in the hierarchy of ER attention). I find the calm gaps getting fewer and further between and harder to conjure up. I begin to worry that this is it. This is me now. That I would have to learn how to live as a permanently convulsing man. I pictured my future—shaking my way through church potlucks, knocking over the soup displays in the grocery store, trying to reassure everyone, “No, no, I’m fine, it’s just a thing I do now.”

The few moments I can get my body to calm down, I tell myself over and over again “I’m still me” to help me focus on the task at hand.

These are miserable minutes. I realize that when it comes to suffering, I’m a lightweight who is thinking more of a Hollywood version of what the word means. Like when a soldier in a movie gets shot, he hits the ground and writhes until the director yells cut. Then he jumps up and it’s time for craft services. But in the theater, we next see him recuperating in a hospital ward. I’m finding greater empathy for those going through the real thing and don’t get to edit out all the long and grueling parts that we don’t usually see.

The suffering goes on minute by dragging minute. I wonder if I’ll remember it. Like will I eventually wake up and my wife will tell me later what happened, and it’ll seem like a fleeting dream, and I’ll wonder what’s for lunch. 

Around minute 40, the reaction starts to calm, and I realize this is the go-through-it sort of suffering, which may be the kind that is the best tutor if you have to go through it at all.

My mind drifts to that scene with Miracle Max, because I am nothing if not deeply philosophical, who explains to Inigo and Fezzik that Westley is only mostly dead, and that mostly dead is partly alive. But then I think of the Miracle Max Corollary, which if it isn’t a thing, I vote that it should be a thing, and that would have Inigo countering Miracle Max with Yes, but partly alive is mostly dead. Because that’s how it is feeling there in the ER.

Not All 40-Minutes are Created Equal

Fast forward to another hospital visit—this time scheduled, because I like to keep my medical adventures well-rounded. I’m here for a – I’m just going to go ahead and say it even in mixed company like a grownup– a c-o-l-o-n-o-s-c-o-p-y, my first rodeo with the procedure. If you’re putting this off, just know that they’ve got this routine down. One minute you’re having a chat with the people  in scrubs, and the next people are annoying you awake from the world’s greatest nap, what’s more they woke you while you were in mid-sentence with the scrubs people while you were about to have the procedure. My wife gently informs me that we were done with the procedure and in the recovery room, and that the results came back negative (which is actually good thing in the secret code language of the scrubs people).

Before long, I’m sitting in a wheelchair being pushed by a scrubs person down the hospital corridors, wind blowing through my hair. Suzanne drives me home, and along the way I notice something is missing, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Then it hits me.

My head doesn’t hurt. 

MY HEAD DOESN’T HURT, I proclaim to her.

And just like that, I understand what heaven must feel like. I don’t know how long this post-procedure bit will last, but before I could come up with a list of things that I could do with this newfound superpower, it went away. Forty minutes of bliss. Apparently something in the cocktail the scrubs people gave me can have that effect. I want more of it, but apparently it’s not something you can just pick up from Walgreens. You have to get a colonoscopy or something. Worth considering. Is weekly too frequently? (Or do two negatives equal a positive? – in any case, still worth considering I say.)

I often think of those two 40 minutes. I don’t have it all figured out, but maybe that’s the way of things. Maybe life is always a balance between suffering and grace, between pain and relief. And maybe you have to go through one to really appreciate the other.

So we take the hard moments as they come, embrace the good ones when they appear, and if we’re lucky, we get a little love and laughter in between. Preferably with a mild sedative.