Recovering from a Robot Attack

No, really.

I got attacked by a robot last Friday. A robot with four arms and very sharp knives. Feel free to read on if you care to hear about it.

It's name is The DaVinci surgical robot, it costs around 2 million and it looks like this:

I'm actually glad I did not see this picture before the surgery. That thing looks malicious. Of course it doesn't operate on its own, a very highly trained doctor manipulates the robot through a screen.

The robot was at IU Health hospital North in Carmel Indiana. For any unfortunate readers who may not be Hoosiers, Carmel is where the rich people live. Not that we have any rich people by New York or San Francisco standards, of course. But I figured if I'm going to get cut up anywhere in Indiana it might as well be in Bougieville. They have the best docs.

They claim that the surgeons can operate more precisely with the DaVinci robot. Maybe. Or maybe they're just tired of getting their hands dirty wading through the innards of some schlub like me. If so I can't blame them.

I came out of recovery about 9:00 or 10:00 Friday night and was surprised to see my abdomen the next day. It was bloated, like I had just eaten four Thanksgiving meals in a row. Apparently they pump you up with carbon dioxide so they can separate the organs a little bit better. I think if they put any more gas in me I would’ve floated away like the Goodyear Blimp. Which would be sub-optimal from a surgery perspective.

But what really surprised me was the six incisions on the front of my stomach. The largest one was over 4 in. My immediate thought: well there goes my second-career as an underwear model.

That's life I guess.

Just a few years ago, it would have been standard operating procedure to spend 4 days in the hospital after a radical prostatectomy. But the bougie hospital sent me home less than 24 hours after surgery. So Amy got to be my nurse over the weekend. And man is she good at it. In fact she's really good at most anything she's done.

Except sports. I hate to say it, but she has the athletic ability of a drunken toddler.

But who cares? In everything else she is fantastic. Including taking care of me while I'm recovering from the robot attack. I can't imagine going through all this without her.

I am writing this on Tuesday afternoon, so about 4 days post surgery. For those interested, the pain level has gone down, but I am still feeling some nausea and a lot of weakness. In fact I'm actually writing this post laying down on the couch talking into my phone. So adjust just your expectations accordingly, please.

And hey, since I'm a pastor who won't be preaching for a while, why not make a sermon out of this? It's kind of what I do. So here goes.

I mentioned that the DaVinci robot looks malicious. And it does. Especially in the first picture. But the second one shows something different.

It is not just a robot with forearms and sharp knives. It is that. But it is also a tool being controlled by someone else, someone who has my best interest at heart. Even if I had awoken during my surgery (yikes!) I would not have seen the operator. Just the robot, cutting into my flesh.

Many people I know, including myself, have gone through various sufferings and tragedies in the last few years. I am thinking of dear friends who have lost a child or grandchild. People who have been disappointed and frustrated and hurt in their relationships. Folks I know who face the kind of pain or weakness I am facing, but they face it almost every day without an end point in sight.

I can never give answers to the why question. I don't understand God, and I don't understand why He allows some things to happen. And, to be honest, I no longer have the desire to understand or answer that question.

All I can say is this. I have 10,000 reasons to have a thankful trust in a God who is benevolent and loving and wise. And I will choose to maintain that trust, even when we lose a child or we face hardships of different kinds. Sometimes it feels like I'm on the operating table, and some menacing figure is bending over me and cutting me open. But I trust what I cannot see, that beyond all that there is one who loves me dearly, and who is working for my good even in the pain.