Anacanafranistan

Like Groucho Marx’s Dr. Hugo Hackenbush slouching along with his compadres Tony and Stuffy in tow to the bedside of Mrs. Emily Upjohn, a gaggle of young doctors paced the hallways carrying their flat open, medical tomes whilst scratching their heads.

Like The Stooges’ “Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard …” clambering for an anacanafranistan to begin their surgery, the young docs searched their dense books that day for an answer to give the unsuspecting parents parked on a bench outside the consultation room.

“We’ve looked at the ultra sound images of your baby’s brain and we’re not sure what’s going on. There’s a lot of blackness where there should be gray matter.”

Is it a tumor?

“We’re calling it a cyst.”

So it’s something that can be removed?

“Well, we don’t know if it’s a solid mass.”

Okay.

“And removing it might not be life-compatible.”

That’s the phrase I remember most clearly. Not life-compatible.

So what is it?

“It might be fluid filling in open space where brain matter should be.”

Fluid. It can be drained, then?

“Well, yes. But trying to do it before she’s born is probably not life-compatible.”

Then can she come out now so you can take care of it?

“Well, bringing her out at this early point might not be life-compatible.”

There it was again. Not life-compatible. That was becoming more and more the answer. The longer she stays inside, the safer she is, protected by the womb and the life it provided but invading the womb to try any corrective procedure was probably not … life-compatible. The longer she stays inside, the larger her head size grows and the more dangerous it is for her, so getting her out gives a chance to try fixing the problem but having her out this early might not be … life-compatible.

The proverbial rock-and-a-hard-place. Except when it comes to the birth of your daughter who is neither rock nor hard place.

White lab coattails floated behind the doctors like security blankets, stethoscopes draped around necks like badges of authority, the big books open in their hands as they scuttled past us toward the safety of the consultation room. “… Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard …”   

This was two months before our second child was to be born. The obstetrician knew her head felt big for this developmental stage and the ultrasound images confirmed it. Something was not as it should be. And there started the next chapter of “Life with Lindsay.”

We prayed. My seminary colleagues prayed. Our church connections prayed. Prayer chains from far away places heard from our friends, and they prayed. “But what should we be praying for?” We wanted only that she could suck and breathe when she was born. That would at least give her a chance.

April 19 she came into this world. She took a breath; she showed signs of the sucking reflex; an evaluation score of 9 at one minute and 9 at five minutes – a 9/9 on the Apgar scale – for this uncertain newborn. Lindsay was alive and she was ready for the world. She was, in fact, life-compatible.    

I met her face to face a few minutes later in the nursery where she soaked up the warmth of the heated bed. My new daughter had a head the size of a one-year-old, her eyes were sun setting but alive. “I love you Lindsay. I’m here for you no matter what. We’re in this together.” For 29 years that bonding moment has stayed firmly knit between us. “I love you.” She’s never said it back to me but if you need to hear it in return, then what love is that?

I often think back about those young docs pacing the hallway trying to make sense of the ultrasound, trying to figure how to mask their own anxiety, deciding what to tell these anxious young parents, searching for facts in a place where faith – “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" [Hebrews 11:1]   – was more the needed balm. 

I’m guessing most went on to be fully functioning docs, many nearing retirement now like this weary old dad after these 30 years. Did they remember that day as their career days moved ahead? Did they use the knowledge from that encounter – the medical and compassion knowledge – in later years? Did they practice what they learned? I know I have. And how many times did that phrase come back again in their medical careers? Life compatible.

Life-compatibility is something we all wrestle with. Is what I have done with my life, am doing with my life, life-compatible? Are we creating a world which is life-compatible? Are we sustaining what God has given us in such a way that all around us is ... life-compatible?

Lindsay wakes most mornings with a smile on her face and a newness in her eyes. She has never said a word yet she speaks to me each morning as we take a moment together. “I am life-compatible, dad. This is who I am,” her presence whispers to mine. “I am here for you, Lindsay, no matter what,” I attempt to share back with her.

We are life-compatible, my daughter and I. No matter who or what might Groucho through our days, we go on in faith and hope. We are life-compatible for as long as life allows.

© Copyright 2017

James F. McIntire

All rights reserved.