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Last
month, after having a mole removed from the bottom of my foot, I wrote
about an epiphany I had regarding writing—that I am a die-hard writer.
I thought the story would end with the last paragraph of that article,
but it didn’t.
Goes to show what I get for
thinking.
Two weeks after my writing, and
still not able to walk, my husband took me back to the doctor to get my
stitches removed. I assumed the problem was due to the thread pulling
too tight against my skin.
I was wrong.
I clunked, clunked, clunked on
Mom’s walker down the long, winding hallway toward the doctor’s office.
As soon as I reached the door, I slid the walking device to my husband.
“Get rid of this.”
“Deb, you need it to walk.”
“I don’t want them to think I’m
a big baby or something.”
“How are you going to get in
there?”
“On my toes.”
He eyed the walker. “What do you
want me to do with it?”
Ahem.
“Take it back out to the
truck.”
He shook his head. “You’re going
to need this when you come out.”
I spied a wheelchair around the
corner and pointed. “No, I won’t. I’ll use that.”
He disappeared with Mom’s
walker.
I tip-toed up to the
receptionist’s window, and she greeted me with a smile. “Hi, Deb.” Then
she eyed me from head to toe—literally. “Are you still having trouble
walking?”
Waving my hand, I made light of
the situation. “I’m like the princess with the pea under her mattress.
I guess the same thing applies to having stitches under my foot.”
She laughed.
Once inside the examining room,
the nurse removed the little black thorns in my flesh. “The doctor will
be in to look at you in a few minutes.”
The doctor came in and checked
out my foot. “How long has this been red?”
“Just the past few days. I
figured the stitches were pulling too tight.”
“No. It’s getting infected.”
I didn’t understand his comment.
My incision looked great.
But it wasn’t my incision that
had become infected. It was the holes where he put the stitches to
begin with. Can you imagine?
I wanted to bang my head on the
exam table.
A short while later,
prescription for antibiotics in hand, I hobbled back through the
waiting room. A middle-aged man who had been sitting there with an
elderly woman when I first arrived spoke up. “There’s a wheelchair we
brought out in the hall. You can borrow it.”
I didn’t tell him I’d planned to
anyway.
Forcing a smile, I nodded.
“Thank you so much. I appreciate your help.”
Walking on my toes, I made my
way to the door.
When I returned home, I hoisted
myself up the steps, back to my office, and plopped down in my trusty
old rocker. I was exhausted, I tell you.
Later in the evening, tornado
warnings flashed across the TV screen. I looked around the room. What
could I take with me to the basement?
Nothing. I couldn’t even use the
walker on the stairs.
I prayed. “Lord, I ask for a
hedge of protection around this house—and all the surrounding
property—in Jesus’ name.”
Less than thirty minutes later,
the tornado sirens blared. My husband rushed into the room. “We have to
get you downstairs, Deb.”
I
eyed my laptop in front of me. “Here, take this.”
“No, Deb. We need to get
going.”
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I
jabbed my finger in the air
toward my desk. “Hurry, in the top drawer.”
He quickly pulled the drawer
open. “What? What is it?” I think he thought I had a stash of cash in
there or something.
“My memory sticks—in the
front—grab them.”
I hopped on my toes, wincing in
pain with each step. “The cats. I have to get the cats.”
It’s a good thing I was wounded
already, or the man might have pushed me down the stairs, God love him.
We made our way to the main
floor, along with the cats and memory sticks, but it still bugged me to
leave my PC and laptop behind, not to mention all my books.
The tornadoes whirled around us
but shifted in another direction.
Within a week, the same thing
happened again. Seriously.
Once again, we followed the same
routine, except this time I seized a book before I went downstairs. As
before, the tornadoes danced a jig around us, but missed us altogether.
This past week, I returned to
the doctor. Crawling onto my belly on the table, I hung my big feet
over the bottom and waited with baited breath as he examined my foot.
“It’s healing nicely.”
I heaved a sigh of relief.
“But you still have a stitch in
here. I hate to have to hurt you again.” He sounded a little too jovial
to suit me.
After he removed the critter, I
sat up on the table, and he smiled. “What do you have planned for this
weekend?”
“Well, I guess I’ll keep
writing. I have a novel I still need to polish.” I probably
could have written another one with all the time sitting in my office
this past month.
He smiled again. “You do know
that’s what they have editors for.”
“Yes, but I’m anal. I have to
polish my work before sending it to anyone, including my editor.”
“I want you back in a month,
just to be sure everything’s okay.”
As of the last few days, I’m now
walking again. Okay, not completely normal, but I’m off the walker.
Like I said last month, things
can always get worse, so I’m not complaining. Venting, perhaps, but I
know I have much to be thankful for in this old world.
Through all of this I found it
funny that no matter what I did or where I went, the subject of writing
still came up—through minor surgery, pain, infection, and even
tornadoes.
Do you suppose God’s trying to
tell me something?
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