Lectionary reading: The FOURTEENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME - September 6, 2009

Mark 7:24-37

Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened."

HOW MUCH PAIN CAN YOU HANDLE? by Larry Patten

Can you say colonoscopy with me?

Yes, as an aging baby boomer, the conversations I have with my doctor frequently include the dreaded “C” word.

“You should have one,” she said about four years ago.

No, correction, she first made that statement six years ago. Then she kept repeating herself during my occasional office visits.

“You really should have it done. Checking your colon is important.”

I finally did the deed four years ago. Drats, that exam revealed a few polyps. And so the “C” word remained a fixture when I visited my always-compassionate Dr. Should. If there hadn’t been any polyps I could have ignored a follow-up colonoscopy for at least a decade.

Alas, those polyps meant a follow-up exam.

Here’s what I don’t like about a colonoscopy . . . the day before. If you’ve had the simple procedure, you know exactly what I mean. If you haven’t experienced the joy of checking into your neighborhood endoscopy lab, you won’t fully appreciate anything I say. No words can adequately prepare a patient for C-Day minus one.

Oh how I wish Jesus was slipping through town, doing a little quick and easy healing. Why couldn’t my wife play the role of the woman demanding a cure for her daughter (Mark 7:26)? Something like, she begged him to cast the polyp out of her husband. And, after a little give-and-take, presto, a cure. Or, why couldn’t I be the like the deaf man (Mark 7:32) brought by his friends to the Nazarene? There wasn't a C-Day minus one for that healing miracle. Instead, a private conversation, a few well-chosen phrases, and the fellow departed, rejoicing in the sound of bird songs and children’s laughter.

Alas, no Jesus to visit. However, on C-Day minus one I consumed medication called Trilyte that could have been renamed Ephphatha. Yes, indeedy! Ephphatha was the Aramaic phrase Jesus spoke to the deaf man: be opened! And the unhearing heard! I dutifully took my Trilyte, gulping a gut-busting three liters of the fluid, and . . . Ephphatha!

* * *

Moments before I’m wheeled into the room where the doctor awaits with his miniature camera and (hopefully) steady hands, nurses tended to me. One nurse prepared to plunge a needle into my arm for an IV line while the nurse on the other side of my bed asked final, necessary questions before drugging me into la-la land.

Nurse Needle, her voice hushed, said, “This will hurt a little.”

Nurse Question, her voice louder, reading from a pre-op check list, asked, “How much pain can you tolerate?”

“Oops, sorry,” Nurse Needle muttered after jabbing the vein above my middle finger. “Didn’t work, I’ll have to try another place.”

I grimaced.

“What I mean,” Nurse Question continued, “is if there’s a scale between one and ten, and ten is the worst pain, how much pain can you handle?”

I thought of when I broke my left leg in three places. I thought of when I went through a divorce. I thought of yesterday when I drank hundreds of gallons of Ephphatha. I thought of the nurse with a sharp instrument next to me.

“Oops, sorry,” Nurse Needle apologized again. “That vein in your arm looked so good, but it just didn’t work.”

I grimaced. Nurse Needle was 0 for 2.

Through gritted teeth I pointed out to Nurse Question that pain levels are subjective. I mumbled something like, “What if I can take more pain in the future than I have experienced in the past? How can that be quantified?” She didn’t seem to appreciate my philosophical inquiry. After all, she had a form to fill out.

Nurse Needle gave up. Nurse Question stopped querying me—I have no idea what number she provided for the pain scale—and circled to the other side of my bed. Now she will attempt to insert the IV.

Ouch!

“There, it’s in,” Nurse Question stated. (Did I detect a smirk or a smile?)

How much pain can you handle? In all the Gospel accounts of healing, Jesus never asked anyone about their pain thresholds.

Please sir, cure my daughter. Please sir, let me hear.

“Now,” Jesus never said, “before I consider helping you, I wondered, on a scale of one to ten . . .”

After the colonoscopy, the doctor visited me and explained the results were negative. Which, in medical-speak, was positive. No polyps this time. My colon, if you’ll pardon the expression, passed with flying colors.

Now the day after, I still think of Nurse Question. She was doing her job. On the operating table, even with a procedure as simple as a colonoscopy, the medical staff wanted me comfortable. How much pain can I handle? Truthfully, I don’t know. None of us really does.

And yet this I do know, and this I do believe, as that woman approached Jesus with her worries about her daughter, and the deaf man’s friends brought him to Jesus, the Nazarene desired for them to be without pain. I suppose, with the next person you encounter, you could play the role of Nurse Question and ask, “On a scale of one to ten . . .” But there’s no need to ask. All of us carry so much pain. Sometimes pain diverts us from life. But it also, in the risk of healing, may open new life to us. Ephphatha.

in Peace,

Larry Patten

(written on August 25, 2009)