I Was Stabbed in the Neck - Rick Walker
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The scan found a mass on my carotid, which is one of the two main routes to feed blood to the face and brain. But since the walls of the interior carotid and the exterior carotid met, that Y-shaped meeting point was also the tumor itself. So came the complexity.
The surgeon pulled a blue Bic from his white lab coat pocket protector. Sketching a diagram on a torn-off piece of exam table rolled paper, he showed me how he would dissect the artery above and below the tumor, remove it, and then attempt to patch and run a new bypass to reconnect my brain to my heart. And, of course, time was of the essence. My brain and face both needed that blood!
After a round of specialist appointments, a major surgical procedure was scheduled a few days later. They told me to plan on potentially spending two weeks in the ICU. Understanding the risks and sporting shorts and a tear-soaked shirt, I wrote goodbye letters to my three little girls, who were each under six. I told them who I wanted to walk them down the aisle. Who to trust. How to help their Mom. The type of man I would approve of them marrying…
When I left for the hospital, I was incredibly concerned that my goodbyes to my daughters could be final. Complications matter. I fought back tears until I got into the car, but only then I broke down. Hands covering my face, tears pouring down my cheeks and over my tumor.
In the silence of that car ride with Shannon driving:
I thought about the future we may never get.
I thought about her next husband: the guy who would benefit from all my hard work…
I considered the possibility of unknown side effects like paralysis of my body or my mind.
The fear set in for a wake-up.
We checked into the Marriott across the street from the hospital because I had a 4:00 AM call time the following day. After grabbing some Salata with my folks, we prayed for the surgeon’s skill and went to bed.
Lying in that damp bed — where a thousand others have helplessly wept for their loved ones in the hospitals all around — all I wanted was to hold Shannon’s hand. To be back in the house hugging my little girls. I was 34 years old and, at that moment, I finally felt like a worthy father. Moments are all we have.
For I finally understood that clinging the hand of my love in the throes of dark uncertainty is the best hope anyone can hold when life is on the line. And life is always on the line.
Walking across the over-road sky bridge connecting the hotel and the hospital, I gave Shannon everything in my pockets…It felt more like checking in for prison.
Once we checked in, on schedule, they sent me back to change. In the pre-op, I made two requests of the nurses and the anesthesiologist. The first was they promised they would remove the catheter BEFORE I woke up. And the second was that I could see Dr. Smith with my eyes before they knocked me out. I feared Dr. Smith, the OBGYN, would show up first instead of Dr. Smith, the Cardiologist.
Lying there behind those cold curtains alone, I thought of the dozens of older men with fuller lives who likely already died in this same drab gown — with plenty of stains — I was now wearing…
…And once passed out, they installed a PICC line entering my neck and down into my heart. I entered a deeper sleep than I had ever known.
Here lies a poor {jerk} with a rich ego, humbly praying for pity for the first time.
The Revelation: The Art of a Miracle
The surgeon’s report was brief: As the chilly scalpel stabbed then sliced open my warm neck. The surgeon’s light — powered by solar panels from the sun’s lighted heat a million miles away — flashed off the surgical blade and into my body.
To light up the unexpected.
The tumor of destruction had not only disconnected from the artery (which the 3D DVD showed it was part of), but it also simultaneously self-healed. Yes, the multiple walls of the Y-shaped artery’s intersection self-healed instantly, so I didn’t bleed out and die from the first miracle.
Order matters. True simultaneity of two consecutive miracles is doubly impossible. But the tumor had also doubled in size over the two weeks since it was diagnosed, making its discovery after waiting dormantly for decades, incalculably timely. I had lived a thousand weeks with it, but the only two that counted were these.
The tumor could have taken me at any of those moments. Yet, in the sole moment among the millions, the tripled miracle occurred: detachment, self-healing, and timing at the same point in time.
Probabilities matter. This tripled impossibility multiplied together in an improbable moment.
That skilled cardiovascular surgeon reached into my neck with his gloved thumb and pointer finger to retrieve the tumor intact, emerging the size of a great egg...
…The Great Surgeon knew what the skilled surgeon did not. He not only resolved the terminal threat inside my body but simultaneously repaired multiple locations in an instant before my body was opened. Order matters — even for tripled miracles. It happened inside of me, which makes it personal because I know there was no tampering with the evidence. It was my eyes that witnessed the multiple interactive images taken from multiple hospitals — my fingers, which felt through my young skin — my hands working the computer to inspect at every angle. The blue pen sketch on hand-torn paper diagramming his planned work — a man who had done hundreds of these surgeries before.
The impossible miracle now stands irrevocably imminent inside me. The incredible event did not just take place inside me; it was Christ working on my very neck and veins that participated in the incredible assault on the causal claims of the medical sciences and logic. Miracles are the divine breaking into nature. At just the right moment.
(The above is adapted from my book.)
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I said above miracles are the divine breaking into nature. That’s also what Christ did. And if God Himself can strike into nature, like my neck, beyond all hope and all scientific reason, He can also invade every circumstance, failed family, and addiction through one belief: that if He showed up once, He could do it again.
If He showed up for me, He might just show up for you too.
Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37:4 ESV
—Rick Walker
