Hurting but Hopeful

“I write to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you.” ~ 2 Corinthians 2:4

I have unanswered prayers

I have trouble I wish wasn't there

And I have asked a thousand ways

That you would take my pain away

When You walked upon the earth

You healed the broken, lost and hurt

I know you hate to see me cry

One day you will set all things right

When my world is shaking, heaven stands

When my heart is breaking

I never leave your hands

~JJ Heller, “Your Hands”

It’s been 11 days since I’ve eaten a real meal.  Sure, I’m happy for the weight loss, but you know something’s wrong with ME when I can’t eat!  I wake at 4am, tossing and turning, unable to sleep through the pain.  I quietly plod down the wooden stairway to the computer in the basement.  The keys become my catharsis.

In discussing my history, family and friends have helped me piece together a strange medical timeline.  The old saying “The truth is stranger than fiction” comes to mind; I do not think I could imagine some of these events!

**1986 - All six of the Matsos clan head down to Jan’s lake house near Atlanta, and meet up with several other families who had become believers with my parents at a tent revival in Florida (resulting in “The Crystal River Band” before contemporary Christian music is widely accepted -- but that’s another story).  While driving through the Georgia mountains, I hang my head out of the suburban to throw up due to motion sickness.  Little do I know this will become my first distinct memory of many, many times of vomiting to come.

**1988 - Facial injury from closely hit line-drive baseball, resulting in an ambulance ride (with a cool guy named “Rocky” who actually looked like the hunky actor from the movie).  Initially, some doctor thinks I have brain leakage through my nose (?!) but they conclude “it’s not” -- or “snot,” you choose :)  I come out of it with two black eyes and a broken nose in 3 places.  Of course, all this happens while Mom’s out in California watching her best friend on Wheel of Fortune and Dad’s home alone with 4 kids!

**1989 - Teachers begin to report to my parents that I complain of headaches at school.  I get glasses.  I continue to have headaches and migraines off & on throughout the years, but since Mom also gets them and the MRI’s are normal, we assume it’s genetic.  We visit the headache clinic at University of Michigan and even try an experimental preventative medication called periactin that doesn’t seem to make much difference.  I try to reduce triggers like stress, traveling, crying, and certain foods and drink.

**1993 - While traveling to Kanankuk Kamp in Missouri, I become overwrought with “chest pain” (which I now identify as upper abdomen pain after 2 normal EKG’s).  As I’m writhing around in the backseat of the old, green Astro van, Dad barrels on down the highway.  Mom gives me Tums but they determine it’s not serious enough to delay camp.  Slowly my symptoms subside resulting in an awesome week and the pinnacle of Jesus coming into my heart (thanks, counselor Marta from Texas)!

**1994 - We travel to Colorado with my high school Outdoor Challenge group by riding A TRAIN FOR 23 HOURS.  After a glorious 40-some degree dip in a glacier lake, I wake up one morning with severe upper chest/back pain.  It hurts to even sip water through a straw.  I can remember laying in the tent with the majestic Rockies rising all around me, saying, “Why, God?  This stinks!  I’m supposed to be hiking with the group right now!”  My angel sister stays with me, and of course accompanies me to the little local hospital when I need to go later that night.  The nurse gives me a GI cocktail, which I promptly throw up all over her (sorry!).  They take my blood and put me on IV’s and try to get me some sleep while my sister keeps vigil by my side.  My white blood count comes back high, so they call my parents in Michigan to say they think I have leukemia.  My parents book me home on the next flight to see specialists.  By the time I get there, I’m beginning to feel better, having been on IV’s and not eating.  They take me to a cardiologist who says I have “pericarditis” - basically inflammation of the sack encompassing the heart.  He thinks I picked up a virus while swimming in the glacier lake, and sends me home with a clean bill of health.

**1995 - My parents take me to my family Doctor for similar upper abdominal pain.  He says I probably “pulled my sternum” because I’m a cheerleader, and later privately tells my mom he thinks it’s just in my head.

**1996 - Back in Colorado for a Christian Worldview Camp (Summit Ministries), I am feeling thrilled to hike Pike’s Peak again since the last amazing experience two years prior.  The morning of the hike, I wake up with chest pain.  Unbelievable!  The camp nurse determines there’s nothing too seriously wrong but eventually sends me to the hospital as a precaution.  I get a ride from Mr. Honken, the dad of 8 kids of a very conservative Christian homeschooling family.  I remember being terrified that he was driving me because he only had one arm, having lost it due to injuries in Vietnam.  He gets me there safely, but again, tests are inconclusive and I go back to camp where symptoms eventually resolve.

**1997 - I head up to the Ellis cabin in northern Michigan with my 3 best friends from high school.  The Great Lakes are beautiful, we have the place to ourselves, and we’re 19 years old.  Party time, right?!  Nope.  I end up in the bedroom writhing around with mysterious pain.   Amanda (now a pediatrician) gives me Tums and calls my parents.  We decide to wait it out, and it gets somewhat better, but they bring me home early.  They tell me later they were terrified and didn’t know what to do with me!

**1999 - I’m standing up in a wedding for a friend from Hillsdale College.  Although I’m having a blast at the rehearsal dinner, an intense migraine comes on.  I ask the bride if she has any ibuprofen or aspirin, and she looks at me like I have 3 heads.  She’s a chiropractor -- one of 27 in her extended family -- and no one in the entire room has anything for me!  Without even making it through dinner, I rush to the bathroom to throw up violently.  Too bad.  It’s an expensive meal!

**2002 - Dave & I hop an Air Force charter flight to England for our “baby moon.”  Even at 32 weeks pregnant, it’s one of the best vacations of our lives.  We see Julisa in London and Kaleen in Oxford.  We visit the pub where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien used to talk, “The Eagle & the Child”.  We drive on the “wrong” side of the road all the way to Scotland, so Dave can see the Loch Ness Monster (no luck).  We climb a huge monument to William Wallace, and people comment continually how quickly I waddle up 246 stone steps to the glorious view of the Scottish highlands.  Shortly after we get back, I am hospitalized with pancreatitis and they also find benign proteinuria (later incorrectly diagnosing me as pre-eclamptic and inducing me early against my desires).  Dave’s in Egypt, and the 3rd Squadron Commander comes by to say he’s getting him home as quickly as possible.  Although I’m on morphine (despite my sister’s frantic calls to the nurse), I distinctly recall a visit that Saturday night from Rick & Beth (our Youth Pastor and his wife from our church Grace Presbyterian in Dover).  The next day, the attending OB/GYN says to me, “Where in the world do you go to church?  I’ve never seen a patient with so many visitors!”  I’m put on NPO and can’t even drink anything, though I’ve got plenty of IV fluid and it resolves in a few days (anyone ever been offered a “moist” sponge sucker at the end of a popsicle stick for dry mouth?  Such a tease!)  After Hannah’s born, I don’t have any more immediate problems with pancreatitis.

**2004 - After Caleb arrives a week late (despite many miles walking around the base neighborhood as quickly as physically possible), we are all overjoyed to welcome our beautiful son.  When he’s 2 months old, and Dave’s out of the country again, another bout of pancreatitis comes on.  I beg the nurses to let me keep him in the hospital with me so I can breastfeed him, but they refuse (the hospital is overcrowded, and my roommate has emphysema).  Dave’s AF buddies -- who don’t yet have kids! -- shuttle my breast milk back the house (thanks, T.J.) where church members are caring for my children.  My mentor Caroline leads the charge, but some of the women holding my newborn and and caring for my toddler are mere acquaintances.  After I’m released, the GI doctor does a CAT scan and endoscopy and sees no anatomical problem or stones.  It’s a mystery case because most people with pancreatitis either abuse alcohol or have gall stones, so I fall into the 20% of “idiopathic” cases (just a fancy way for the doctors to say, “We have absolutely no idea!”)  We have plans to travel to Edmonton, Canada for a wedding and the doctors say I can go.  Thankfully, we thoroughly enjoy our time and have no medical issues while there.

   

** 2006 - Christina is born at a birthing center with no pain meds, after 12+ hours of hard labor (which is why I never say “10” when asked my pain level now, ha!).  As my sister holds my hand, she says, “Just one more hour and she’ll be born on my birthday.”  My fiery Christina must have heard that, because she comes out shortly before midnight.  She wants her OWN birthday!  Over the next week, I’m feeling chest discomfort so my midwife runs some blood work.  I distinctly remember this coming on after I’d eaten too much of a delicious lasagna made by my dear friend Karen.  Amylase and lipase are elevated, so she sends me to my primary care Doc.  At this point, a couple days have gone by and when my blood is re-tested, it’s normal.  Two months later, I go back to the Dr. with similar symptoms and he runs the blood test again.  He doesn’t think I have recurrent pancreatitis because the symptoms are mild, so he tells me to rest and assume everything’s normal unless he contacts me.  I still don’t feel right, but as time goes on, it gets better.  A couple weeks later, while calling to check on some other routine results, the nurse asks me about my second bout with pancreatitis.  A frantic and frustrated Doctor soon calls me back to say my labs “fell through the cracks” and though I did indeed have pancreatitis again, it has since resolved.  The GI doctor runs a HIDA scan to check for gall bladder function, which comes back normal.  Around this time, my migraines flare up and I’m sent to a neurologist.  He gives me a medication (Maxalt) that works really well for me, but says I should have a scan of my head.  “I have 3 kids aged 3 and under; I don’t have time for this!,” I thought.  So I never went, even though the Air Force would have paid for it.  Wasn’t that stupid?!

** 2010 - After an unexpected baby blessing delaying our plans to become missionaries in Indonesia, I make it nearly 3 months postpartum with no pancreas problems.  Then, it comes on with a vengeance!  I feel desperate because medical care is marginal in the developing world, and I end up traveling hours to the capitol city, leaving my children with other missionaries.  I tenderly leave sweet baby Clara with an Indonesian nanny, comforted by her faith in Christ to protect one of my greatest treasures.  Dave and I succumb to the stress and get into a huge fight before we leave :(  That sure didn’t feel like a great witness to our Muslim neighbors.  After a week in the hospital in Jakarta, we travel to Singapore for further testing (blood work & endoscopy).  It’s determined that I only have a bit of sludge in my gall bladder and could have it removed, but it might not be necessary if I’m done having children.  We decide to wait.

So that brings us to my current struggles.  And what’s the purpose of sharing all this?  At the risk of sounding self-focused (what Dave calls “navel-gazing”), it's a way for me to process and also chronicle my experiences in the event that someone, somewhere might be able to help.  Although I cannot begin to recount God’s grace and providence woven throughout this story of pain, it is still very difficult to write.  Perhaps what adds to the challenge is that I still do not have definitive answers, and it’s possible I never will.  I’m facing the reality that I might live with chronic pain for the rest of my life.  People might think I’m a hypochondriac or just melodramatic (and I do admit to a low pain tolerance).

Despite these set backs and fears, Sunday morning dawns with hope once again.  I arrive at church with a broken but thankful heart (having showered and gotten ready for the first time in a week!).  I hardly enter the doors to worship before emotion floods the canyon of my soul.  With hands sometimes trembling and sometimes lifted high in praise, I weep and hold my husband and children.  I have to leave service several times, but I can still hear the life-giving music in the bathroom, praise God!  I admit to some disappointment that our regular teaching pastor isn’t preaching this Sunday.  I hope the sermon will be focused on something glorious like the Resurrection.  But no, the sermon is based on Mark 15, the period between Christ’s death and resurrection.  There’s a tension here between the “already” and the “not yet” and Pastor Tim explains how that’s exactly where we live right now.  We are “already” cleansed by His blood, but we are “not yet” free of sin.  We are “already” redeemed by Jesus, but we are “not yet” enjoying the future glory that is in store for us.  After the service, I jubilantly head up front to hug our pastor.  Although I’m still having physical pain and can’t eat much, my spirit soars.  When someone at church asks me how I look so good while I’m sick, I have one simple reply: 

“Jesus. Just Jesus.”

~ My appreciation to JJ Heller and the David Crowder Band for their musical inspiration while writing this.

I dedicate this post to my four beautiful children -- Hannah (11), Caleb (9), Christina (7), and Clara (3)-- who are the best story I’ve ever written and worth far more than every ounce of pain I’ve ever experienced.