The Surgery Incident

I write about these awful incidents to remind me, when things are going OK, that I can never let down my guard.

During the first couple of months of our house-building project seven years ago, I was suffering from debilitating pain from hemorrhoids. It was bad enough that I was forced to stay in bed for several hours each morning before starting on the building project for that day.

Finally, after nearly three months of agony, I elected to undergo surgery, much to the annoyance of my spouse. The recovery period lasted about two weeks, and was also excruciatingly painful (followed by a blissfully pain-free existence). Nevertheless, about three days after the surgery, I was back out on the building site, fixing the mistakes that had been made the day before by a work party of friends. This involved climbing ladders, removing bracing on a dozen posts, releveling the posts, and reattaching the bracing. I had no help during this process.

Every so often I’d have to stop work due to sudden incontinence (an after-effect of the surgery). After being unable to get to the toilet 400 feet away during one such attack, I dug a hole close to the building site, and left a trowel and some toilet paper in plastic bag next to the hole. This made the next two weeks easier on the state of my clothing.

Needless to say, my suffering both before and after the surgery were a source of great annoyance to my spouse. Before the surgery, she expressed annoyance that I was unable to help her for a couple of hours each morning on the building site. After the surgery, she complained about how difficult it had been to manage our helpers for three days. I don’t deny that it must have been difficult. What made the complaint insulting was that she also said I should have delayed the surgery until after the building project was completed. That would have meant continuing with agonizing pain for another six months, all to save us a few days of my contribution to the project. I heard this complaint several times that year.

There were other incidents like this during that building project that told me I was not going to be treated with much kindness or compassion in the future.