Stones | Really Random Writings

        When I was nineteen years old, I volunteered for two years as a missionary for my church. Fukuoka, Japan was a place I had never heard of before, but was excited to be assigned to. Frankly, there was nothing on earth that could have prepared me for what I was getting into, as I think most of the young men and women in my situation would agree with. However, I had a little something more to deal with than simply learning a new language, preparing to live in a different country for almost two years, and reaching the high standards expected of missionaries; I was terribly sick for about two of the two and a half months I spent in the center responsible for training us missionaries. Two days after I got to my first assignment in Japan, I wound up in the hospital getting my appendix, and three calcified stones that had formed inside my appendix, removed. I only remember bits and pieces of what happened throughout that day. After I woke up from the surgery, I was able to piece some of the day's events back together. And here's what I remember from surgery in a foreign country. As much of a difficult experience as it was, that first experience in the hospital ended up being one of my favorite mission experiences.

           Gray fog filled the room, so thick I could only see dim shapes moving around me. I was lying down; bound. I couldn't move. I wanted to panic, to release myself from my restraints, but I didn't have the energy to accomplish such a task. As oxygen screamed to my brain, the fog began to lift, and humanoid forms emerged. I heard voices and struggled to tune in. The words seemed so foreign. As I strained to understand, I heard a familiar voice, though I couldn't identify the speaker. I turned towards the voice, and as if triggered by my movement, the dim shapes I had sensed earlier drew around me. What they intended for me, I could only speculate. Terror blossomed in the deepest corners of my being, and forced its way out of my throuate in the form of a scream.
            “Cody….Cody….CODY!” I recognized the word. My own name. A large hand was placed on my chest, restraining me from thrashing about in panic.  The fear inside of me slowly died, and I tried to respond, finding that I could move, though slowly, as if struggling through water. I began to wonder how I had gotten into whatever situation I was in. “Wahh...” My throat was parched, but I found that was the least of my worries. I felt a dull pain throughout my stomach, and wondered where the train that had run over a foreign missionary was… WAIT! I was a missionary! I knew that. I was sure of it!  Before I could muse over this new development, I heard the voice again.

            “Cody, you’re ok. It’s over.” It? That explanation did me a lot of good. “You’ve had a rough time of it kid, just relax now.”  I blinked, and the fog lifted to reveal a masked face with glasses jammed over the bridge of a rather large nose. “Cody, its Elder Hicks.” The voice sounded slightly muffled due to the white surgical mask over his mouth. I looked at the guy hanging over me, and tried to remember where I’d seen him or how I knew him, for I was sure that I did.

            Me lying down…surgical masks…gowns…I had never been accused of being very good at math, but even I could see what this was adding up to. Never before had I been hospitalized, and wasn’t quite sure that I liked the situation. I couldn’t even remember why I was there. As I searched for anything that would explain my predicament, I looked again to “Elder Hicks.”

            Now I remembered. My memory took me back. How far, I didn’t have a clue. Everything was blurred and fragmented as if my memory had somehow been smeared by outside forces. 

          Pain. Pain beyond anything I had ever experienced. My abdominal muscles convulsed, bile rose in my throat, and an explosion of pain erupted as though an abdominal volcano had erupted. Exhaustion overcame me as I fell back onto the gurney...

          The scene changed. I was sitting in a chair, slouched with arms folded on a table, trying to listen to…two voices? “…which would explain why you were sick for two months. They need to…” I understood Elder Hicks voice, yet the next sounded foreign. Maybe that’s why I didn’t understand what was being said.

            “Haiyaku mouchyou wo setsujyo suru hitsuyo ga arimasu yo.” 

            “Ok, Cody, it looks like they’re going to need to remove it, and fast. They’re going to operate, probably within 2 hours…” Remove what? Operate?? I was in a foreign country!

            Another memory flashed into being. All I could see was the tunnel of white coming towards me. I went into it feet first. Another flash. I was lying on my back, and being wheeled into a room with black and white pictures hung all around, with lights behind to reveal skeletal structures. X-rays. A technician stood above me and operated the complex machinery. A heavy weight was placed on me for reasons that I couldn’t understand as he prepared to beam high energy light through my body to expose my bones. Why was I here?

           Another memory. “Ok Cody, the ultrasound is done. They’re going to take you into a room in the back and put you in a bed.” Again the scene shifted. “They’ll hook you up to an I.V. and take some blood samples. They’ll let me stay here to translate, so you’re gonna be fine.” Fine? The pain in my stomach was consistent, I was sure, with a stab wound. It tormented me for the last two months, and seared my abdomen as I heard this news. They had found something, and now I was going to a back room to be hooked up to machines that would regulate my body’s every function. The pain in my stomach again spiked as I realized the implications. Why didn’t the pain stop? I was just stressed, that’s all. I had had stomach pain before, and I had never gone to the hospital for it. In fact, I had never been to the hospital before for anything.

            The pain continued to build until I wanted to bawl from the agony. “Cody, are you alright?” There was the voice again. I found myself in the back room hooked up to an I.V. which I was unceremoniously stuck with after they drew blood. The pain in my lower abdomen caused tears to roll down off my face and onto the bed. “Cody, I’m going to talk to the doctor, see if we can get you some drugs for the pain.” An Asian face peered over me and blabbered something unrecognizable to me. “Cody, this is the Stake President. He signed the paperwork to get you into the hospital, so the hospital is now allowed to give you some drugs for the pain and to run further tests. We’re also trying to get a hold of your parents, let them know what happened. You might be here for longer than we thought, so we’ll need their approval and to keep them updated on your condition.”

            My flashback ended with one final scene. I was in a waiting room, dressed in a white shirt and tie. A friend of mine had tagged along, bringing with him someone to introduce. I had bigger worries on my mind, such as why had we driven up to the emergency room, but I tried to be polite as I was introduced to Elder Hicks. “I know what you’re going through, I’ve had mine out too. It’s not bad, and you get some cool scars. Why, when I went to the hospital…” I tuned out as I realized that I was probably going to be hospitalized in a foreign country 3 days after getting there. Not the best start to the two-year adventure that I had been looking forward to for my far too short 19-year existence.

            I yanked my mind back to reality after hearing the now familiar voice of Elder Hicks, who had been with me since the beginning of this mess. “…and they think that you’re lucky and aren’t infected. Its called peritonitis, real nasty infection, and they don’t know how you missed it. I told them that you had been in pain for two months. The calcified stones wore holes in your appendix, and so basically the stuff in your appendix dripped into your body for two months. They’re scratching their heads over this one. Forget the infection, you’re lucky to still be here.”

            You never realize how precious something is until you come close to losing it.

            Almost a week later, with bail posted I was out of the hospital, never to return. Or so I thought. “You’ll love being here in this section of the city! The missionaries are great, and our outreach center for the youth is fantastic!” I couldn’t help but smile at the enthusiasm of the elderly gentleman driving. I also couldn’t stop staring out at the new world like a kid in the window of a candy store. “And we’ll be putting you right work. We wanted to keep you with us for a couple of weeks, but the President, he…” The rambling continued even after we pulled up to an apartment with peeling paint and what must have been an entire squadron of bikes.

             “Oh, I’ll be alright thanks.” I tried not to take offense to the elderly, yet animated missionary offering to assist me up the stairs. If I could survive almost a week in a foreign hospital full of Japanese nurses, by golly I could get up three flights of stairs under my own power.

Ten minutes later as we entered the apartment I wondered if I should have taken him up on his generous offer.