I’m healed!
I yelled those words to anyone within earshot at our lake cabin the evening of August 4. I had just gotten off a Face Time call with Dr. Sarah Psutka, my surgeon at UW Medical Center. The proof was on Dr. Psutka computer, as she displayed images from a CT scan taken 24 hours earlier.
“You can see here the kidney is healing on its own, there’s no leak,” said Dr. Psutka pointing to shades of gray and white tissue that I did not fully understand. “I viewed the images last night, and I was hopeful. But I wanted to talk to the radiologist today, and confirm what I saw before I delivered the good news.”
Good news, indeed. But did I really believe it? (More on that later)
Anyone who has read my blog posts over the summer knows I had serious complications following my surgery on May 20 to remove a cancerous tumor on my right kidney. There were painful procedures (tubes hooked up to me I didn’t want to be hooked up to). There were sleepless nights. There were moments of despair. There were moments of doubt.
But something happened during the last days of July that changed everything.
Dr. Psutka is one of the leading oncology kidney surgeons in the U.S. She’s used to performing successful surgeries. She’s not used to complications. Vicki and I had a Face Time call with Dr. Psutka on July 17 on the heels of several disappointing drain fluid tests that indicated the kidney was still leaking. Up to that point, procedures designed to expedite the healing process had proven to be futile. She told us my surgery was one of the more complicated she had ever performed. Lucky me! She said in her 11 years at the UW she had only one patient that had complications like mine. Her partner at the UW, who has been there 17 years, she said has only had three cases similar to mine. Clearly frustrated and searching for answers, Dr. Psutka told us she had reached out to one of her colleagues at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for some advice.
“My colleague thinks the drain could be doing more harm than good,” she told us, noting that the second drain put in June 8 after my first infection might be unnecessarily pulling urine from the kidney, spiking my creatinine levels . “He thinks I should pull the drain, the stent and tubes (I’ll spare you the gory details). I prefer a step-by-step approach.”
The drain was pulled on July 20 at UW. A follow-up scan to see if the leak still existed was done three days later. It indeed showed a small collection of perinephric fluid “compatible with a urine leak.”
Not good news. Dr. Psutka’s assistant, Jade Meaker, met with us to explain the next move was to install a temporary “nephrostomy tube” into my right kidney to drain urine into a bag attached to my leg. This procedure, it was explained, would allow the surgically-repaired kidney to heal. The left kidney would drain urine naturally.
Jade said the procedure was basically a ‘Hail Mary,’” or in other words a last-gasp effort before Dr. Psutka would have to remove the entire right kidney that she had operated on only two months earlier.
We were devastated. Our planned September 8-28 trip to Europe that was a year in the making was now in question. My psyche, rocked by one bit of bad news after another, was also in question. The procedure, scheduled for the following Monday July 27, would be invasive.
This is when the tide began to turn. It was the “comeback after the setback” I had hoped for, and inferred in earlier blog posts.
Dr. Psutka, after performing a surgery at Harborview Medical Center on Friday evening, July 24, had taken a red-eye flight the same night to Indianapolis. She was in Indianapolis for the weekend to speak at a medical convention. For all I know, she went off script and told the gathered group of doctors she was baffled by complications with a particular patient from a partial nephrectomy surgery.
She called me Saturday morning that weekend, asking “How are you feeling.” I replied “I’m feeling great.” Based on my CT results two days earlier, without saying as much. Dr. Psutka suspected I would get another infection. On Sunday evening, while on her flight back to Seattle, and just hours before my 10 a.m. appointment the next day for my nephrostomy tube procedure, she texted me, “How are you feeling.” Again, I replied “I feel fine.” Full disclosure here. How many doctors give their patients their private cell phone number and call them on weekends and when they’re out of state?
At this point, I had come to a crossroads. The night before, I sensed an inner voice telling me, “this kidney could heal on its own.” I debated whether to even bring that up with Dr. Psutka – would she think I was crazy? – but finally decided to do so, asking in a text if the kidney could heal without intervention. She got right back to me: “I’ve been thinking the same thing over the weekend.” She said she would call me when she landed in Seattle.
An hour or so later, while Dr. Psutka was on an Uber ride from Sea-Tac to her home near the University of Washington, she called. She said “we have two good options here. We do the safe thing by putting in the (nephrostomy) tube, or see if it will heal on its own. There is no clear (correct) solution.”
I said, “let’s see if it will heal.”
Less than 12 hours before a team of doctors, nurses and an anesthesiologist were scheduled to install the nephrostomy tube and remove the small collection of fluid from the suspected leak, the procedure was called off. Instead, Dr. Psutka removed the urethral stent and “tubes” the next day (Monday), as the colleague from the Mayo Clinic had recommended.
Afterward, Dr. Psutka said she wanted to speak with Vicki, who was in the waiting room, to see if she had any questions. Vicki, for whatever reason, told Dr. Psutka “that kidney is going to heal on its own. A lot of people are praying for Rick.” Vicki said Dr. Psutka looked doubtful. As we know now, the results from the CT scan the next week proved Vicki was right.
Fast forward to August 24, about three weeks after I had received the initial news from Dr. Psutka at the lake cabin that my kidney had healed. I was scheduled for two more CT scans. One was the three-month checkup to see if there was any evidence of cancer at the surgical site or nearby organs. The other was to take yet another look at the right kidney, to make sure it had healed up.
I must admit I approached the scans and subsequent follow-up appointment with Dr. Psutka with some fear and trepidation. I guess I had experienced so much post-traumatic stress over the course of the summer that I was a little skeptical. In my mind, there remained “scar tissue.”
Vicki was a little puzzled by this, telling me “your kidney has healed. Dr. Psutka already told you. Why are you nervous?”
It occurred to me I had not completely bought into the fact I had “been healed,” no matter what I yelled that day at the lake cabin.
It reminded me of a story in the Bible. In Mark 9, a desperate father asks Jesus to heal his son, crying out with both faith and doubt. The father basically tells Jesus in verse 22 “heal my son if you can.”
Jesus replies to the father “If you can? All things are possible to him who believes.”
Jesus could have said “you don’t have enough faith, so I’m just movin’ on to someone else.” But he doesn’t do that. What happens next is very moving.
Verse 24 says the boy’s father told Jesus, “I do believe; help me in my unbelief.” Jesus rebukes the unclean spirit in the boy, and heals him.
Both of my scans on August 24 came back clean. I have no cancer. I have some collateral damage from some procedures. But my kidney has healed. I asked Dr. Psutka, “could it start leaking again?” She replied, “only if I opened you up again and starting cutting on it.” She cleared me for our trip to Europe.
How often have we prayed for something, God answers that prayer, and we attribute the favorable outcome to something else? We all know that there are times God doesn’t grant us what we’ve prayed for. But does that cloud our ability to appreciate when prayer is answered?
I know, without a doubt, God has led me through several storms in my life. I am not unique. We all go through storms. It can be a financial storm. It can be a relationship storm. It can be a medical storm. This battle with kidney cancer was a storm.
There will be more storms in the future. I will be fearful. And yes, I probably will be doubtful. But in my humanity, in my short-sightedness, in my weakness, I will say:
I do believe. Help me in my unbelief.
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