It has been almost three weeks since Amy and I left Santa Fe, New Mexico, and returned to our village home on the outskirts of Oaxaca, (Old) Mexico.
When we departed for Santa Fe in early September, the land was parched from drought. I had never seen the weather behave so unpredictably. The farmers had planted their cornfields at the end of June, around the beginning of the rainy season, when the skies ordinarily open and the thirsty earth drinks deeply. Almost overnight, the brown fields turn green, and the countryside undergoes a marvelous transformation.
But this year, toward the end of August, just as the corn was beginning to tassel, the rains stopped.
For nearly a month before we left, I watched the unfolding tragedy. The stalks began to wither, their leaves curling inward, their once-vigorous green turning pale and brittle. Since I have always felt a deep kinship with plant life, my heart ached to see this interruption in the cycle of growth. The farmers had done their part. They had prepared the soil and planted their seeds. But the heavens had withheld their blessing.
Now, as though to make up for lost time, the rains have returned in abundance. The earth is green again, and the hillsides shimmer with new life. But for much of the corn, the reprieve came too late. This year's harvest will be meager. Still, nothing goes entirely to waste. The stalks will be cut and used as fodder for animals.
Nature has its ways of making use of what remains.
Ostensibly, our trip to Santa Fe was to make progress resolving a stubborn wound left from my surgery in Oaxaca on June 24, when two bladder stones were removed and my enlarged prostate was reduced.
In most respects, the operation was successful. But afterward, the abdominal incision began draining fluid from two or three small openings. Since then, I have been changing bandages three times a day. And still it drains.
In Santa Fe, I had a twenty-minute, rather unsatisfactory consultation with a urologist, underwent two urine tests, and spent an hour with my longtime family physician. A sophisticated CT Scan was ordered to determine the source of the mysterious drainage. But the medical system seemed caught in a logjam of scheduling and delays. Before the most important study could be performed, Amy and I had to return home.
It was frustrating, to say the least.
And so, like the cornfields, I found myself waiting for something essential that did not seem to arrive.
Then, at last, this past Friday, a good doctor here in Oaxaca, a specialist in wound care, saw me immediately as a walk-in patient. He opened the wound, cleaned it, and inserted a small tube to probe more deeply. He withdrew a syringe full of clear liquid, which he confidently proclaimed to be urine.
This was potentially the very evidence I had been seeking in Santa Fe, where the expensive imaging study had been ordered to investigate whether my bladder was communicating with the abdominal wound through a fistula—an abnormal passage between two parts of the body.
Yet, the fluid could also have come from a seroma, a pocket of clear fluid that sometimes develops after surgery. Further examination may be necessary to distinguish one from the other. A the moment of discovery I was shocked at the vial he held in his hand and could not formulate any questions. At home, the next day, I sent his office an email with my question, but it is the weekend, so wait for a response tomorrow.
Today I am undertaking a little experiment of my own. I intend to eat beets and drink beet juice, knowing that their deep red pigment sometimes passes into the urine. If the drainage from my wound subsequently takes on a reddish hue, it might offer another clue that the bladder is communicating with the incision. I will be watching over the next 24 to 36 hours. It is hardly a scientific test, and certainly not conclusive, but after months of uncertainty, I am eager to discover whatever clues my own body might provide.
On Wednesday, I will meet with my original surgeon to determine the way forward.
I want my life back!
There. I have said it.
For months now, an inordinate amount of my attention has been directed toward a small opening in my abdomen. The changing of bandages, the examinations, the questions without answers, the continual vigilance—it all becomes exhausting. There are paintings waiting to be made, words waiting to be written, places to visit, friends to embrace, and the ordinary, marvelous pleasures of being alive.
Yet perhaps the cornfields have something to teach me.
I watched them struggle beneath a merciless sky. I grieved for their interrupted growth. And now, although the harvest will not be what the farmers hoped for, the rains have returned. The earth is drinking again. Life continues its ancient work, sometimes invisibly, sometimes in ways we do not expect.
I have come to understand that healing is not always a straight path toward restoration. Sometimes it is a season of waiting. Sometimes it requires intervention, patience, and the humility to acknowledge that the body has its own mysterious intelligence.
Outside my window, the cornfields are stirring in the rain.
And somewhere within me, I believe, the work of renewal is continuing too.