Detour | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Detour | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jeremy Sudler
07/09/15
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES

“Mom,” I said, wobbling. Her eyes met mine. “I…I can’t walk,”
“You’re kidding me?” she asked, an unsure smile on her face.
“No,” I forced out, my eyes meeting hers in helpless.
Her face dropped. “Go lay down,” she said then calling for my wife. Quickly my wife came to my aid helping me into bed.
“I need to get him back to Indy,” I heard my wife say. My heart sank I wanted to protest but I felt my mind black out. When I came to I was shuffling toward the car. My wife sat me in the seat and buckled me.
“Jeremy,” my mom called to me, “You’re not moving to Nashville, we’re too concerned about your health,”
“No, No I want to go. I feel better,” I protested.
“No Jeremy,” my mother said, “we’re too worried about you.”
I looked over at my wife, hoping she would see my desperation. She took my hand in hers, “I know you told me to listen to God, and I know we had plans to move to Nashville, but something is telling me to get you better. I got to get you to see a doctor,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. My heart sank.
Two days before I was a healthy 35-year-old. Now I was as helpless as an infant. My wife was sacrificing her dreams of working with St. Jude Research Hospital so that she could find out what was wrong with me. I wanted so desperately to spring from my seat, run for miles, beat on my chest and exclaim, ”see I’m better”, but when I opened my mouth my words were filled with stutters and half-formed words.
Before long I found myself at a diner silently eating chocolate chip pan cakes.
“Jeremy,” my mom asked. I looked up, my heart still filled with hopelessness. “What do you want people to say about you when you die?”
I paused struggling to gather my thoughts. “That I was a doctor,” I forced out.
“And what else?” she asked.
“That I wrote a lot of books,” I responded.
“And what else?” she asked.
I glanced toward my wife. Her eyes were surveying me with concern. “And that I loved my wife and raised good kids,” I answered.
Tears welled up in my wife’s eyes. “I know you want me to go after my dream,” she said taking my hand, ”but I want to take care of you.” I nodded, wiping the tears from her cheeks
The rest of that day was a blur of emergency care, friends helping load a moving van, a two hour drive back to Indy and then collapsing onto a bed, sleeping my way through the night.
A day later I was in emergency care panting and struggling to breathe. The doctors worked over me eventually finding that it was an adverse reaction to my Bronchitis medicine that was causing my trauma. The medicine was lifted and I was allowed to get better on my own. In a week’s time I was back to normal, but I wasn’t out of the woods. You see the doctors my wife wanted to me to see wasn’t for my bronchitis, it was for something much worse.
The following Monday I was sitting in a radiologist’s waiting room. Eventually they called me back, sat me down on an examination table and pulled up an MRI scan of my brain. “Mr. Sudler,” the radiologist began, “the radiation treatment you received for your cancer worked well, but it caused swelling in your brain.”
I swallowed hard, processing the news. “What are we going to do,” I asked.
“We have a couple of options,” he said. As he went over the options my mind began trailing off. Soon I was filled with gratitude. If it weren’t for the loving concern of my wife I wouldn’t have lived to see my next birthday, but because she knew me, because God knew me, because I had grace I was now in a place where I could find healing. I’ve heard it said that it isn’t so much the destination that makes the trip, it’s what you experienced along the way. If that is true, then I can count this as one of the most amazing trips I will ever experienced in my entire life time.

PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY
SUBMIT YOUR ENTRY FOR THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE

The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.

If you died today, are you absolutely certain that you would go to heaven? You can be right now. CLICK HERE

JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.