Twenty Days of Comfort: Day 3, "Healing"

A couple of weeks after Jordan's birth, it became evident to the doctors at the St. Mary's Medical Center NICU (and to us) that he was struggling to thrive. No matter how much milk we crammed into his gullet, Jordan would throw it up. His oxygen saturations would still occasionally play havoc, and things came to a head when we need to have surgery performed on our adorable little gopher. A nissen fundoplication was ordered for Jordan: an operation in which the surgical team would flip his stomach over the end of his esophagus to prevent any reflux and--we hoped--thus holding his food down and helping him gain some needed weight.

So on the day of the surgery, Jordan takes us through everything: the pre-operation bustle, the anesthesia, waking up afterwards, and final reflections. And in iambic pentameter, of all things...

Healing

New hope awakes and brings with it the dawn

As nurses mill around my little bed

With comforts soft before my skin is sawn

So that I will have no more need to dread.

Another takes my hand. I feel the pinch

Of pain's sharp entry in my hand, transgressed

By strangest fluids fast designed to cinch

My body deeply into sleep's congress.

In dreams I run as angels lead me forth,

Forever my Creator's grace will flow

Far as the Southern Cross to frozen North;

His love pursues me ev'rywhere I go.

Again I wake to strongest stinging light.

A weight within my mouth signals to me

That help I need to breathe on through tonight.

Perhaps from it tomorrow I'll be free.

For now, it is enough that I'm adorned

By strips protecting, watching o'er this scar

That serves as Ebenezer, proof I'm shorn

Of this debility God's flung afar.

Tomorrow's poem: "Home"