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On Tuesday, November 23rd, with the help of my Amazon Kindle, I was reading two books at the same time. It’s not something I normally do, but maybe it’s similar to when I have the remote control in my hand, and I can hardly keep myself from changing channels constantly. I was most of the way through A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller and was enjoying it a fair bit so I really wanted to only be reading the last quarter of this book. Still, I had my men’s Bible study the next morning, and we have been working our way through Follow Me to Freedom by Shane Claiborne and John Perkins, so I had to read Chapter Two before Bible study early the next morning. Thus, I found myself switching between the book I wanted to read and the book I needed to read.
Coincidentally, or in retrospect perhaps not at all coincidentally, I was reading two chapters about pain almost simultaneously.
In Miller’s book, in which he challenges his readers to write a better story for their lives, he discusses how going through challenges, more specifically painful challenges, will bring people together. Like any good story has the protagonist involved in conflict, so too does a good life story. Those who risk the possibility of experiencing pain or difficulty in their lives are much likelier to live a fulfilling existence than those who choose to sit on the couch watching television and never risk a thing. Miller makes some conscious decisions to start taking some risks in his own life to start creating a better story for himself. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that his most successful books have been mostly autobiographical, and if he’s not choosing to do anything exciting in his life, he is very likely going to be writing books that no one would really want to read.
In the Claiborne and Perkins book, the chapter I was reading in preparation for Bible study had to do with leaders needing to experience pain right alongside their followers in order to truly empathize with their suffering. Their main point is that people are a lot less likely to follow leaders who have not gone through their own challenges.
As I read both of these chapters, my thoughts predominantly went to my brother-in-law, Trevor. While none of the authors referred only to physical pain, my mind kept going there.
Trevor and his sister (my wife) Tracey were in a vehicle accident when they teenagers. While no one was killed in the accident, Trevor was the most badly injured, fracturing two vertebrae. He has experienced back problems and chronic pain since that time. The pain has become even worse in recent years as major surgeries that promised a better quality of life have instead had the reverse effect and exacerbated the pain. He can do very little in his life without causing himself a lot of suffering.
To be honest, I have had difficulty empathizing with Trevor’s plight at times. While I have been sympathetic, being empathetic in such a situation has been much more difficult. This has been made even more difficult being continents and oceans away from Trevor and my sister, Tamara. (If you don’t know our family, a brother and a sister married a sister and a brother.) Honestly, there has been the odd time I have just wanted to say to Trevor, “Get on with your life. Don’t let the pain become who you are and how you are defined as a person. The pain seems like it’s not going away, so you may as well start living life.” Of course, I would have never said this to Trevor because I’m not completely heartless, and these thoughts of mine are only fleeting in the midst of many other thoughts of complete sorrow for what Trevor has to deal with everyday.
As I read those two chapters in two different books, I couldn’t stop thinking about Trevor, and I also couldn’t stop thinking about my attitude towards him. I don’t usually remember what I say to God, but on this occasion, I very distinctly remember thinking, “God, I do not understand what Trevor is going through. I cannot understand his pain. Sure, I have had physical injuries [I have broken my leg, badly sprained my ankle, and strained knee ligaments], but I cannot possibly understand what it is like to live in chronic pain.”
That’s all I thought, nothing more. By no means did I ask God to send a little pain my way. I’m no martyr and certainly not a tough guy when it comes to pain, suffering, or even sickness. In fact, I’m generally a pretty big baby. See me with a common cold or the flu, and I might give you the impression I’m on death’s door. A small cut with a drop of blood will send me to the couch feeling queasy. In the summer, when I had a bleeding nose that wouldn’t stop due to the heat and dry air, Nurse Tracey had me pinching my nose as any good nurse would advise. After an hour of this and consequently feeling quite claustrophobic, I fainted on the way to the couch. Tracey caught me, helping me to avoid a serious head injury to add to my woes. You can see what I mean – I don’t do pain or suffering all that well!
Theologically, I don’t believe that God inflicts pain upon humanity, but I do believe in a sovereign God who is ultimately in control of everything. If I believe this is true about God, I also have to believe that if there is suffering in this world, God must allow it to happen. It has something to do with living in a fallen world. Why he allows it to happen is a debate I’d rather save for another day, but if he didn’t allow suffering to happen, it wouldn’t.
All of this is to set the stage for what happened to me the day after reading the two chapters about pain.
I came home from work that Wednesday and my contact lenses were feeling a little grainy. It’s not unusual here in Rwanda as it can be very dry and dusty and often the contacts need to come out at the end of the work day. I took out my contacts and didn’t think twice about my eyes feeling a little sore and tired.
The next morning, while my right eye felt fine, a grainy feeling in my left eye was replaced with fairly severe pain, excessive tearing, very blurred vision, the sensation of a foreign body, and extreme sensitivity to light.
It is now twenty-four days later. While I don’t have the sensation of a foreign body anymore, the other symptoms remain. I have seen five doctors (all eye “specialists” of some kind), visited three hospitals and one clinic, and had nine different appointments. That’s in Rwanda. We’ve also had an ophthalmologist in Saskatoon and our family optometrist and good friend, Dr. Dan Derksen in Williams Lake, giving us as much advice as they can by distance. Combine that with a whole lot of our own internet research, and we’ve got quite a mass of information on our hands.
The white, cloudy mass and many little dots indicate where the hole is in the epithelial layer of the cornea
Here’s what we’re fairly certain of at this point. I have a hole in the epithelium of my eye. The epithelium is the outer layer of the cornea. Normally when you scratch your eye, the epithelium will heal in a day or two, yet the hole in the epithelium in my eye is still very much present after three weeks. It seems I have what is known as corneal erosion syndrome, and while there is one large eroded area, there are also other infiltrates (dots or other irregularities) in different levels of my cornea. We are also fairly certain that some of the treatment I have had over the past three weeks may have delayed the healing or may have even made the problem worse. What no one is yet certain of is the cause of the damage (although wearing daily wear contact lenses for way too many days is likely one of the causes) or what else may be going on in the eye. The epithelium normally keeps out all infections and viruses. When it has a gaping hole in it, all kinds of nasty things can happen, many of which we are choosing not to research at this point for our own peace of mind.
On Monday, in Gitarama, an hour away from Kigali, a Belgian eye doctor named Dr. Piet will see me again after prescribing antibiotics for four days in between visits. At that time, he will likely make a decision to stay the course with antibiotics or to send me home to Canada or somewhere else to receive treatment I cannot receive in Rwanda. Either decision will come with its own level of personal and family angst. Still, Dr. Derksen has personally spoken to Dr. Piet on the phone and has a good level of confidence that he will make the right decision.
For the first time over the last few days, I have started to process the idea that I may have permanent eye damage, even if this is only a small possibility. No doctor has said this to me, but I am not ignorant to the fact that being sent home to Canada means that we have reached the level of “serious”.
Obviously, it has not been lost on me that all of this happened the day after explaining to God that I had no understanding of chronic pain. Those of who don’t believe in God will chalk it up to coincidence, but you do have to agree that the timing is bizarre. I don’t know if God is using this whole ordeal to teach me something, but I am learning a lot nonetheless.
Don’t get me wrong. I still have no real understanding of chronic pain. Three weeks is not a lifetime. Still, I have a slightly higher level of understanding than I did before. When my eye is most painful, gushing with tears, and sensitive to light first thing in the morning, I can’t wait for noon. When I’m at work trying to pretend everything is okay and I can’t get past the distraction of the pain, I can’t wait for the work day to be over. When I get home and have a few minutes of comfort as I place a cold cloth over my eye, I wish the feeling would last forever, but alas, the pain subsides only for a few minutes. When I place a bandage patch over the eye and cover that with an airline-provided blindfold, I again have temporary comfort that is fleeting. I feel like a vampire because I only want to go outside at night. Unlike many illnesses or injuries, sleep provides little respite as the eye dries out at night because I’m not blinking. I can’t get away from the pain, and everything, literally everything, I do is somehow impacted by it. That’s what chronic pain is – it’s CHRONIC.
As emcee at Tracey's birthday party, this would not have been my first choice in fashion
So Trevor, I’m sorry when I have not been as supportive as I should have been. Tamara, we all understand a little bit better what’s it’s like to have your life ruled by a health issue. I ask for your forgiveness too.
As for us, pray for clarity in our decision-making in the next couple of days. Pray for Belgian Doctor Piet as he helps us to make decisions. Pray that I will head to the country where I need to go for the care necessary. If I need to fly through Europe, pray that flights all start moving at some time today.
When we made the decision to come to Africa for two years, we knew that a lack of access to quality health care was perhaps the biggest risk we were taking. This latest issue has not changed our minds a bit that we made the right decision to bring our family here. Still, we are curious as to how God will help us to write the next chapter of our story.
Tags: eye, pain
