Teetering on the Brink of Depression

It's been almost a week since my last post, and it's been an emotionally tumultuous time.

The good news is that the pain is getting a lot more manageable, and the wound is healing well. Sunday marked two weeks since the accident, and was the first day I was able to make it through a whole day without taking any narcotics for the pain. So that's good. Last night, however, the pain woke me up at one in the morning and was quite intense. I tried to fall back asleep, but couldn't. After half an hour of pain and sleeplessness, I got up and took a Vicodin. That did the trick.

The thumb itself is doing as well as could be expected. The skin is coming together around the end of the stub, and is healing nicely. I'm scheduled to go back to the doctor on Monday, and I'm hoping the skin will have healed enough to take out the stitches. For now, I've got it wrapped in a bandage and a splint. I'm supposed to take the bandage off once a day to shower and clean the wound, which I've been doing.

I've been trying to give it some air and spend a few hours without the bandage each day. The skin around the wound is still very sensitive and produces shots of pain when I press on it, so I still can't really push my thumb against anything and use it for leverage. Which makes it hard to tie my shoes and do other things like that; things where thumbs come in way more handy than I ever realized.

I feel like I'm on a journey walking across a huge frozen lake; a lake so big that it will take weeks, if not months, to get all the way to the other side. It's late winter on this metaphorical journey, and I know that spring is coming. There's hope for warmer days, more sunshine, and new growth and new opportunities. The question is, will I make it all the way across the lake before the ice melts? I have no choice but to proceed. I can't go back to where I came from; it's not there anymore. But I wonder if I'll have the emotional stamina to make it all the way to the other side of this lake before the ice gives way and I crash into the cold waters of depression.

When the bandage is off and I'm left to stare at my stump, I have to confront the fact that this is what I'll be looking at and carrying around with me for the rest of my life. Sure, the wound will eventually heal completely, and the skin will be smooth with no stitches or scabs. But the fact is, I'll never have a whole thumb again. And it's hard to accept that reality, at least emotionally. I feel like I've accepted it intellectually; it is what it is. But I'm not yet there emotionally.

A few nights ago I took a shower just before dinner. I got dressed and came into the kitchen, where Dana, Sara and Casey were setting the table and getting ready to sit down. I wanted to see how things would go trying to eat a meal without the splint on, so I asked the girls if it would be ok with them if I ate dinner with my thumb in its natural (but still very unnatural) state. Sara, our nine-year-old, consented immediately and asked if she could see it. She hadn't yet seen what had been covered by bandages for nearly two weeks. She took a look, and acted like it was no big deal.

"Do I have to look?" Casey asked. "I don't want to see it."

"No, you don't have to look," I answered. "But this is what it's going to be like from now on, so you're going to have to get used to it, just like I'm going to have to get used to it."

She allowed her eyes to glance toward my thumb, and immediately became disgusted. "It's gross! I don't want to have to look at it!"

I promised to try to keep it blocked from her view while we ate dinner. She began to cry, something she doesn't do very much now that she's a somewhat mature eight-year-old. I could tell that she was crying out of compassion for me. It's hard for her to accept that her dad will only have half of a left thumb from now on. It's hard for her dad to accept it as well.

I've had a recurring dream the last few nights. I feel like I'm standing on the edge of a very deep chasm. My job is simply to stand there and stare into it until I'm relieved of duty. The problem is this: There's a strong tailwind blowing at my back that's making it hard to stand, and there's a magnetic force coming from deep inside the chasm that is trying to draw me in. I know that all I have to do is stand there, but at times it just seems too difficult to sustain. I want to stop fighting the force, and to give up and let it just suck me into the chasm, but I realize to do so would be to submit to a darkness from which I might have a really hard time reemerging.

I think the dark force is the self-pity that I flirt with embracing. I know that I have to continue to resist it, even though something false keeps trying to convince me that the self-pity will feel good. It keeps reminding me that I have very good reasons to be afraid and depressed, given the circumstances of our life right now.

But at the same time, I recognize what is keeping me standing on the edge of the precipice: It's love. It's the love that Dana has shown me through this whole ordeal and way preceding it. It's the love of Sara and Casey that fills my heart with hope and joy each day. It's the love of my friends and family that I experience through their smart-ass emails and Facebook comments, and through their intentional acts of kindness shown through things like buying us new tires or bringing over and cutting a cord of firewood. It's the love of all of you that is keeping me standing through this unfortunate event, and it's a blessing from God that I can't help but notice and for which I'm extremely grateful.

Which is kind of the weirdness in all of this, and certainly one of the lessons I believe God wants me to learn through this experience. Sure, I was grateful for what wonderful friends and family I have, even before my accident. But now I have a much greater appreciation for it, not just because it feels nice to have that support, but because I realize what an important factor it is in life itself. It's what keeps me standing. It's what gives me hope. It's what enables me to believe that this too shall pass, and that the life ahead of me still has tremendous potential for deeper beauty, grace and meaning than I've experienced so far.

And if it took cutting my thumb off with a table saw to get me to realize the power and importance of love in my life, then I guess I'm grateful for that too.