Washing Feet: An Example of Service or Something More?

Jesus Washing Peter's Feet by Ford Madox Brown 1852-6 So, during supper, fully aware that the Father had put everything into his power and that he had come from God and was returning to God, he rose from supper and took off his outer garments. He took a towel and tied around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and dry them with the towel around his waist. - John 13:2-5 Today, in 2024 A.D., we don't give much thought to these few sentences. The impact of the activity of Jesus is lost on us because a) We wear shoes everywhere. Many of us even have "inside shoes" and "outside shoes". b) The Church's liturgy (as popularly practiced) often misses or lessens the importance of this event (pro tip: it's not simply Jesus giving and example of serving others). Contrary to what we see in the movies, the roads in the time of Jesus weren't all covered in perfectly placed cobblestones or silky, fine dust. If r

Our Life With a Saint - Part 10 - Our First Night in the NICU

This is one of a series of chapters from my book about life with our special-needs daughter, Catherine.

Start at the beginning here.

Read the previous chapter here.

Our Life with a Saint Part 10 - Our First Night in the NICU

I honestly have no recollection of how we transferred from Grant Hospital in downtown Columbus to Nationwide Children’s Hospital less than a mile away just across the I70 and I71 split. I’m pretty sure I drove Nicole and myself there but I don’t remember.

What I do know and do remember is that it was the first and only time that we left a hospital after the birth of a child, without that child. Nicole fought tears with empty arms as the nurse pushed her in the wheel chair to our vehicle the next day. Another nurse, one from Children’s Hospital, had called that morning to let us know that Catherine wasn’t doing well and she was in serious condition.

I do remember coming into the NICU late in the afternoon of May 3rd, 2008 for the 2nd time of my life. It would be only one of hundreds of visits over the coming months but it was worlds apart from the visit we had made earlier in the year. Back then the area appeared as a happy place teaming with life and hope. At that time we were outsiders looking on with rose colored glasses. Now we had skin in the game. Now too, all of that life hanging by tiny threads or fragile webs was merely background noise. My tunnel vision was back and I stared helplessly at the crowd of blue scrubs surrounding a plastic womb where my tiny daughter lay weighing less than a bag of sugar. Had she only been born yesterday, mere hours ago or was it eons upon eons of ages past. There was no time. Time was an illusion. There was only now, only this moment and maybe, perhaps with luck and grace, the next.

Don’t worry, we call it the positive people effect,” said Dr. Neel with a smile. It was a genuine smile and like a ray of sun in a windowless room and timeless place. “The best minds in this building are devising a plan for Catherine.

Catherine? Wow, it was the first time I’d heard someone other than myself, Nicole, or the man in black say her name out loud. It was shocking and wonderful for some reason.

She continued, “we’ve run some tests and there is a problem with her intestines.

I’m sure the confusion was plain on my face. Of course there were problems with her intestines! That’s what started the whole thing, some duodenal something or other.

It’s called intestinal malrotation,” she continued hoping to catch me before I lept too far ahead of her. “When we develop in the womb, at a certain point our intestines grow, lengthen, and settle into the area designed for them. This didn’t happen for Catherine.

Again, a non-medical man stood in the midst of high-tech art and science with eyes blinking stupidly while hidden knowledge passed between the doctor and my wife.

She continued, “This needs to be fixed immediately. It’s like when you pinch a garden hose and it shuts off the water supply. With malrotation the stomach does not receive an adequate amount of blood and eventually dies. If the stomach dies, we have really big problems.

I’m sure that’s not what she said but that’s how it was translated in my ears in a matter of nanoseconds. There would have to be a surgery to fix her stomach and it couldn’t wait for days as we had originally hoped. It had to be done now, this evening at the latest.

To complicate things, she is still on the ventilator. To be honest there is a very real chance she may not make it through all of this but that is why you see the best minds in the building working on a plan,” said the doctor with warm, comforting eyes reading the pain she had just inflicted upon us. “She’s fragile and very tiny but we’ve already seen what a fighter she is and so we’re hopeful. You should be too.”

Hope, it is said, springs eternal and I believe that to be true. The alternative is despair, depression, hopelessness and an eternal spiral into darkness. We had to be hopeful, it was the last thread of sanity that we were clinging to at that point. We hoped that the surgery would be successful. We hoped that we could soon take our daughter home. We hoped that all would be well and Catherine could live a normal, healthy life (whatever that means). I say hoped but we could replace that word with prayed. Sometimes, in the darkness, it’s hard to see a difference between the two. Our hope was a prayer of its own and our prayers were expressions of our hope. For the coming weeks our hopes and prayers would be intimately intertwined and wrapped like a mantle around little Catherine Therese.

Dr. Neel continued, “As you know, her lungs are very fragile at this point due to her aspiration and this surgery may stress them beyond capacity. So, if we operate to fix the malrotation, her lungs may not be able to keep up. However, if we don’t perform the surgery her intestines will die and impact her health significantly. Unfortunately, you have a decision to make, a decision that we’ll respect either way. Take a few moments to think about it and talk about it. When you’ve made a decision, let us know.”

Nicole and I must have had that deer-in-the-headlights look in our eyes. We were being asked to make a decision that would have lasting consequences for our daughter who was barely 24 hrs old. Do you push this sweet little fighter to use her lungs to the point of breaking with a very invasive surgery? Or, do we forgo the surgery to preserve her lungs and hope for the best regarding her intestines? Either decision brought about the very real possibility of her death.

There must have been a few hundred people on the floor at the time. Parents, nurses, doctors, aides, and visitors milled about. I can’t say this for sure because I saw none of them. I saw only Nicole and me and Catherine. I stood at the foot of the plastic womb Catherine now occupied tethered not to one single umbilical but many. Nicole was at Catherine’s right looking through the clear plastic covering unable to touch her first-born daughter. No one else existed. We stared on in silence with little beeps and mechanical sounds in the background. It was as if we were center stage, the spotlight was on us, and the entire cast of other characters had disappeared into the surrounding darkness.

Nicole looked up at me and wiped tears from her eyes, “well, what do you think,” she asked softly.

I think she should have the surgery. They said she’s a fighter. I can’t imagine the alternative,” I replied gently fighting back tears that were welling up.

Me too,” Nicole said with a soft smile.

We both turned our attention back to Catherine. Even though she was pierced, prodded, and taped, she was our beautiful daughter. We stared on in wonder and wondered if this was the last time we would see her alive. At this point hope wasn’t a gushing river careening through our hearts and minds. Rather, it was a tiny rivulet barely bubbling above the surface but it was still there and that was a good thing.

Dr. Neel, reading our body language returned to center stage, “how ya doing? Any questions?

We both turned and smiled as best we could at her. Nicole wiped her nose and I pushed tears out of my eyes with my fingers.

We’re ready,” Nicole said with unimaginable strength. “We want her to have the surgery.

Dr. Neel placed her arm on Nicole’s shoulder, “okay, we’ll get things ready and start soon.” She turned and nodded to her team somewhere stage-left. “Take a few minutes, we’ll be back to take Catherine to the operating room shortly. The surgery will take some time, maybe a few hours. There is a room here you can stay in tonight. Just talk to the desk nurse and she’ll give you the details.

The doctor left us alone once again. We stood side-by-side with Catherine in her little life-pod. Her now-vivid, pulsating, pink flesh lie still, warm, and comfortable. We looked, loved, and prayed hand in hand. In a few moments she was off again and we were alone.

The desk nurse showed us to our room in the NICU. The room was basically a hotel room in the middle of the floor for parents like us whose son's and daughter's lives were hanging in the balance.

The last 48 hours had been whirlwind. Mass with my brother at St. Catharine’s seemed like a century ago. Catherine’s birth, baptism, and transfer to children’s felt like it had taken place months ago. Now we faced what would prove to be the longest 3 hours of our lives. I like to joke and tell people that we spent three weeks at Children’s Hospital one night because that’s what those hours of surgery and the rest of that night felt like. If you’ve been in that situation, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

We sat on the bed in the hospital-hotel room and waited. Time expanded. Seconds felt like minutes, minutes like hours, and hours like weeks. Unlike many hotel rooms there was no window to help us judge the passing of time. We were in a box with a bed and a bathroom and we were thankful for that. Outside the walls of our box voices, beeps, and bells could be heard but only faintly. Outside our solitary confinement box other families visited their children, wept over their loss, and made heart wrenching decisions like we had just done a few minutes ago...or was it a few days…

We heard a gentle knock on the door of our room. Not sure if it was intentional or accidental from someone passing by we merely looked at each other. The knock came again a little more firmly this time. I jumped up to open the door.

Dr. Neel’s face appeared as I slowly opened the door. “Can I come in?” she asked.

I opened the door and she came into our box. Why was she here? Surely the surgery wasn’t finished, right? They had just taken Catherine back a few minutes ago, or was it a few hours? I honestly couldn’t tell.

I suppose that is my idea of purgatory too. Purgatory is like being in a small box room with no windows. There is no way to tell time and the passing of time was incomprehensible. Did I arrive a few seconds ago or was it years? Was my last thought five minutes ago or 10,000 years? Purgatory, in my mind, would be a seemingly endless period of time alone. The only difference between my idea of Purgatory and Hell? Hope. With Purgatory there is the hope that one day release will come, the Doctor will knock and enter with wonderful news. In Hell, even that hope is gone.

Dr. Neel sat on the corner of the bed at Nicole’s feet. I returned to my place beside Nicole. Dr. Neel’s gentle smile provided some relief to the worry and chaos of our minds.

Catherine did great,” she said softly. “We fixed the malrotation and her intestines looked fine and there wasn’t any damage that we could see. The duodenal atresia or stenosis is still there. That will have to wait for another time, when she recovers from this surgery.

This was fantastic news. However, we all knew that there was a giant asterix standing boldly behind these sentences.

Dr. Neel continued, “However, her lungs were extremely stressed. She’s in very serious condition right now as we knew she would be. That wasn’t unexpected. And I am absolutely convinced that Catherine is a fighter and she’s going to fight hard.

The doctor knew that she had just inflicted a very real and serious wound upon our hearts. She knew after years of practice that hope does spring eternal and that sometimes the hope of parents is unrealistic and unreasonable. Sometimes, the truth hurts and hurts hope but it is the truth. Our truth at that moment was that Catherine was still alive, her intestinal malrotation had been fixed, and she was in serious condition, and there was the very real possibility that she may not make it through the night or the coming days. Yet even in the harsh face of truth, that rivulet of hope continued to bubble.

We spent the night in the windowless box holding one another, praying, dozing, crying, and hoping. It was the longest night of our lives. In the morning we learned that Catherine was still alive, still fighting. We were full of hope once again. The doctors and nurses were full of hope and I believe Catherine, in her own way, was full of hope too.

What we also awoke to was a new normal, a new way of life that would continue for almost exactly four months. We visited Catherine for a long time and prayed over her. Afterwards we began making plans to move into our new, temporary home in Columbus, the Ronald McDonald House. Our families began making plans to help watch the other 4 children while we focused on Catherine. Life had changed but still, there was hope.

Read the next chapter, Brick by Brick, here (available soon)



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God bless you - Jim Hahn


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