It is cliché, yet apt in this case, to say hindsight is 20/20. My long ordeal of kidney failure, migraines, strokes, TIAs, aortic valve replacement, etc., all began with a scratch on the back of my neck in September of 2009.
Our dear friend, Michael Yezdimir, was dying in Abington Hospital. I felt terribly tired, but not particularly sick, when I went to visit him. I had a little scratch on the back of my neck, probably from a flying wood chip, either from icon production in my business or from working on renovating our barn to house the business. Michael passed away a few days later.
I first met Michael several years earlier. He had arranged to meet me where I was working as office manager at Diseroad, Wolff, Kelly, Clough & Bucher Architects in Hatfield, PA, for us to go out to lunch together. My pastor, Fr. Boniface Black, had referred us to each other. Mike had been raised in the Serbian Orthodox Church. All of the services were in Serbian, so he could not understand anything that was going on. He left the church. Later, he had joined an evangelical church and married and raised a family. He and his wife, Sharon, had three daughters. Mike was feeling drawn back to the Orthodox Church. He and I were the same age. I had made my journey into the Orthodox Church starting in 1997 and being chrismated in the Spring of 1999. Mike confided in me that he had hepatitis C and hemophilia. He also knew that his family would be quite resistant to Orthodoxy with all of its icons and incense. I’m sure this is why Fr. Boniface had referred him to me. Bethann had had a hard time accepting my conversion to Orthodoxy. We had waited for her to come around. That’s why I was not received until 1999, so we could be received together. Due to Michael’s health, Fr. B. did not wait so long to receive Michael back into the church. Sharon struggled for a couple of years, but eventually embraced it fully.
The scratch on the back of my neck became inflamed and terribly infected, probably from some of the people on the street giving me thank you hugs for the meals we served in the park. I am allergic to most antibiotics, so it got worse and eventually I had to see a surgeon to have it cut out. He pronounced me healed when he took the stitches out. I told him, “If I’m healed, why is there still pain and the feeling of heat there.” He said, “The incision is closed. My work is done. You are healed.”
The infection was not gone. A year later, October 2010, Fred Benjamin and I were leading a group on a tour of Center City Philadelphia from a homeless person’s perspective. My back hurt so badly I needed help getting up and down steps or over low walls in the encampments. I called my doctor. She ordered X-rays, a CAT scan, and blood work. She prescribed Fentanyl patches and Percocet for the pain. On Wednesday, I got a call from the hospital telling me that they read the images and they suspected bone cancer in my spine. I was to discontinue the Fentanyl and only take Percocet. We had to wait a week to test for cancer, and the Fentanyl had to be out of my system. Nothing definitive showed up in the blood work. The Percocet did nothing for the exquisite pain. I told Dr. Jerry Burke about this report. Now, Jerry is not my doctor. He is a very good friend who has saved my life three or four times. He saw patients at Grand View Hospital at that time and we went to the same church. The head of the radiology department, Dr. Joe Kyriakos, also went to our church. In fact, we were both in choir. Jerry called Joe and told him to look at the imaging again. He told him that no way did I have bone cancer. Bone cancer is almost always a secondary cancer. I had no history of cancer, but I did have a history of infection. Both Jerry and Joe volunteered from time to time with me to serve the homeless in Phila. with The King’s Jubilee.
I was in so much pain that Bethann did not trust to leave me home alone when she had to go to work on Saturday morning. She arranged for Serge Kaminski to stay with me. Even with two Percocets, I would scream in pain when standing up or walking.It was not pleasant for Serge. About 11am, Grand View Radiology called me, They said they looked at the images again and concluded it was not cancer and to please come to the Emergency Room to be admitted to the hospital. They were so sorry for the mistake. Bethann came home and took me to Grand View. To their credit, the head administrator of the hospital called me twice to apologize for their error.
In the hospital, they put me on a morphine drip, Fentanyl patches and Percocets, to manage the pain. They gave me MRIs from my brain to my tail bone, with and without contrast. I was in that machine for over an hour. I enjoyed the beat. I dreamed of a rock ballet to go with it. (That had nothing to do with the drugs.)
I had my cellphone with me. This was a mistake. On Sunday, while high on Fentanyl, morphine, and Percocet, I called everyone in my contacts list. I have no recollection of what I said to them. All I know is that they won’t tell me, and that several of them have refused to take any more calls from me, ever.