A few weeks ago I was in the mall and I saw by a big, tall man with a cane. He limped slightly as he walked. As I passed by, I looked at him and realized he was somewhat familiar, and old patient of mine I thought. I smiled and mouthed ‘Hi’ as I continued on to my destination, a health/vitamin store.
As I turned from the shelf from which I grabbed a box of fitness bars, I was startled because that big tall man was right there in front of me. He must have walked softly because I didn’t hear him come in. Of course there were two other customers at the counter and the sales girl talking so that must have covered up his footsteps.
He began, ‘Doctor Colbassani?’ I said ‘Yes’. He said, ‘You still doing that brain surgery thing? Feeling slightly uncomfortable with it being put that way, I nodded yes.
Up close his size was more readily apparent. He was over six feet tall (although he was bent slightly forward leaning on his cane) and weighed at least 260 pounds. When he reached out to greet me I felt dwarfed by the size of his hand. Face to face he reminded me of my father’s cousin who used to play for the New York (football) Giants.
‘You may not remember me’ he said; to which I interrupted, ‘yes, you are familiar, but it has been a long time’. ‘1996’, he said. He then continued, recounting his recollection of when he first met me…
‘I remember lying in my bed in the ICU when you came in and said’, ‘You are lucky to be here’. And I said ‘What do you mean?’; Then you said, ‘You should be downstairs’. ‘Downstairs, what’s downstairs?’ I asked you. Then you told me, ‘the morgue!’
At this point I felt a bit embarrassed, because I didn’t think I would ever say such a thing, at least not in that manner. But, given my arrogance at that time of my life, I might have said just about anything.
‘Then you told me you were going to have to operate but that I probably would not survive the operation anyway, but that I had no choice. And I remember my wife standing outside my room with our pastor and they came in and he prayed over me.’ ‘It’s hard to take the knee but sometimes you have to’. To which I replied, ‘Well sometimes being on your knees is the best place to be’.
The interesting thing about this encounter was, here was this big tall grizzly-like man speaking to me and not quietly, but no one else in the store turned around to look. You would think the words ‘brain surgery’ or ‘morgue’ would pique someone’s attention to look over.
As he continued to speak of his problem and my treatment of him I gathered he had a severe problem in his spine, and at this point I vaguely began to recall his illness. He mentioned something about having a high fever and an elevated white blood cell count, so I remembered he had an abscess pressing on his spinal cord.
‘So you did the surgery’, he continued, ‘and I did survive and my temperature became normal and my white blood cell count dropped to normal as well. But when you came in to my room the next day you said, ‘OK you made it through but you will never walk again’. ‘Well here I am and I guess not doing too bad.’
Usually when I encounter patients that I have treated, if they come up to speak to me, it is usually to say thank you. But this gentleman never said that, and yet it didn’t seem like he wasn’t being critical of me either.
I have been to that mall hundreds of times since 1996 and never once saw that gentleman before so I’m still not certain why I had this chance meeting with him. In fact I had just finished in the office and it was late, and I was going to forgo going to the mall but my wife told me, ‘no you should go and check out that bed we were thinking of buying’. As I was leaving that particular store, I saw the GNC store out of the corner of my eye and figured I would go and buy those protein bars I had been meaning to get.
At one point he asked me how my family was which I found curious, because in 1996 I was not married and though I did have a daughter and a son, I had not yet starting dating my wife seriously at that time.
When he finished his story, I still felt a bit uncomfortable, perhaps even a bit guilty, so I shook his big hand and told him ‘Well it was good to see you and I’m glad to see you are doing well’, to which he lifted up his cane and shrugged his shoulders. Struggling for something else to say I blurted out ‘Well, it is still a good day when you’re upright and able to walk’ (And I’m glad I was wrong about that too, I thought).
That night when I got home I searched my records for this gentleman’s name. I had my notebooks of my surgical cases from 1988 through 1998 but for some reason I had misplaced the one that had the list for 1996. At the office the next day I asked about the medical charts for patients that year and was told after 10 years the charts were destroyed.
So here I was at a loss to find out what was this man’s name, and why our paths had crossed the night before.
Although as I think about it, I’m not sure any of that matters. Of course we always want to know the reasons why things happen but sometimes it is just best to trust in God that there is a reason and leave it at that. I do realize that is not enough nor is it possible especially when tragedy strikes our lives. We feel despair, we are confused, and angry all at once.
And at those times it may be difficult to believe God truly loves us but it is precisely at these times when He wants us to turn to him for comfort and peace.
Now I am not certain how it is that my story which began with a chance encounter with an old patient of mine turned into comments about loss and grief, but it did. I am not sure of the reason anymore than I know why I met that man on that night at that particular time. Maybe it was to keep me from being somewhere else had I just gone into the store, bought my protein bars and left.
Or maybe while he was grateful for what I had done for him, he really needed remind me that I didn’t have all the answers and I wasn’t the one with power over life and death.
It is likely I will never know, at least here on earth. I just trust God sent him as an angel to be there for me.
‘he will cover you with his pinions,
and under his wings you will find refuge;’
‘For he will give his angels charge of you
to guard you in all your ways.’
Psalms 91:4, 11
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