6 – Yesterday’s Tomorrow

I spent a lot of time thinking about the title of today’s episode – Tears for Fears, Yesterday, Perfect Day, Tomorrow Never Comes, All Our Yesterdays – and a couple of dozen others that I can’t remember for the life of me. Maybe I can’t remember the others because of all my yesterdays. I did a quick calculation and, at the time of writing, I have had 26,565 yesterdays. You start to realise that your memory is not all that great when you think of all the days you have forgotten.

The thing is that I don’t want to remember my latest yesterday.

In my last post, I said that I had an appointment for a biopsy and another procedure. The appointment was yesterday (Monday). On Friday, my apprehension began to build and by Saturday it had turned to fear. It wasn’t just about the procedures, it was the knowledge that biopsies are taken to get results and that the results would soon follow. I know that my previous posts talk about how to think about it and what to think about, but it’s not easy to do when events get closer and closer.

It was also a bit worrying that, instead of saying to someone that I was going for a biopsy, I actually said that I was going for an autopsy!

Nor does it get any easier when you start Googling things! I made the great mistake of “researching” what else they were going to do. Not a good idea. If you are facing things like this, don’t do it!

On Sunday, the fear had gone but I was very emotional. I had a Skype call with my son and found it very difficult to keep the tears back. I think that helped in a way. Then, that evening, I had a WhatsApp conversation with two friends. We are in a group called You, Me and Him and we often have these conversations where we just take the mick out of each other. My sad tears turned to tears of laughter.

I have used that verse so many times. I have tried to persuade people to stop worrying about tomorrow. I have tried to persuade myself to stop worrying about tomorrow. The problem is that I have always looked at the tomorrow bit of the verse, not about the today bit. Yes, on Sunday I used it to stop worrying about Monday. I concentrated on Sunday and I was fine.

But Monday was yesterday’s tomorrow. On Monday, Sunday’s tomorrow became today.

I had to fast from food and liquids from midnight but could take any medication at 6:00am with a sip of water. I was to be at the hospital for 8:00am. So the day began. I was prepped for the operations, which were to be done under local anaesthetic.

The doctor came in and explained what would happen and what would be done. There would be three biopsies from the same site, but the results won’t be available for two weeks, since they have to grow them and test. Two weeks away is thirteen days I don’t need to worry about, eh? Can’t be bad!

Then she told me that the procedure was going to be done a different way to the one I had googled, as it probably wouldn’t have lasted long enough. (Phew!) They would instead be performing a nephrostomy, putting a tube through my back into my right kidney and it would drain into a bag. I would probably have it there for three months. (Unphew!) They need to do that to protect the kidney from damage. I have to be very careful after the operation and if I see any signs of infection I have to get to A&E immediately as sepsis could set in. (Who hit that panic button????)

I stopped worrying about tomorrow. Today really had enough troubles!

Two porters then pushed me down to X-ray for the operations. I didn’t realise that beds could move so fast!

I then had 45 minutes of the most excruciating pain I have ever had in all my 26,000+ days! The biopsy was bad enough, but was just a few minutes. The nephrostomy was unbelievable. I screamed. They gave me more morphine. I still screamed, I was beginning to think that an autopsy would have been easier and it did seem to be looming. Finally they said it was done, but the pain continued and it was an hour or so before it passed.

I was taken back upstairs and slowly recovered. Libby came to take me home a few hours later and I was so glad to be back.

So, why am I telling you all this? Partly, it’s to let you know what is happening. Partly, it is to tell you that we should understand everything that Jesus tells us, not just the bits we want to hang on to. Partly, it is to remind you that tomorrow becomes today, but only if you are fortunate – many people didn’t waken up this morning.

Mostly, though it is to say that today might be truly dreadful, but tomorrow today will be yesterday. Yesterday is now in my past. I am alive today, and I am going to make the best of it, thanking God that I’ve got it!