Intimidated
April, 21 2015
Have you ever been intimidated? I imagine most of us have. The feeling is quite unpleasant.
Most of my personal experience has to do with the threat of or direct abuse of power. I recall my childhood where the older kids at the bus stop would push me around. One shoved a holly berry so far up my nose I had to go to the emergency room to have it removed.
(Somethings you just are unable to forget.)
Intimidation is often present when someone has the power to adversely affect your future. Remember those days at school when the teacher would begin the year by placing you in syllabus shock. They would show you in minutes what would be expected from you by the end of the year. But it felt as if the work was that all was due by the next class.
Intimidation can be more stealthy as you get older. Maybe you have a boss who likes to remind you of their ability to retain or dismiss your services. Or perhaps there is a peer who enjoys recounting their past glory years that were always more glorious than your own. All the years of fighting intimidation never prepared me for the day Josiah’s medical team descended upon us.
Josiah had been through a battery of tests. The doctors had previously told us it was probably a tumor in his brain due to the double vision and lack of balance. I was not expecting great news from this meeting. But I was praying for hearing words like “small”, “manageable”, “good location”, and especially “benign”. But my optimism quickly waned as the steady flow of white lab coats entered the small conference room.
The room was the average size of your typical hospital room but felt a lot smaller with a ten person conference table in the middle of it. The room filled slowly with men and women in white lab coats. Josiah’s mom and I took two seats on the far left corner of the table. One by one the medical professions entered. Some would take a seat while others stood against the walls. By the end all the chairs were occupied and you could hardly see the walls.
Dr. Eugene sat across the corner from me. He was the person who would be directly over seeing Josiah’s care. He began to name the medical professionals in the room including their specialty, position in the hospital, and future on my son’s medical care plan. I do not think he named everyone in the room because I got lost in the enormity of it all.
I was intimidated by the degrees in the room and the authority they would have to diagnose and create a solution for my son’s problem. What would be my part in the midst of this group? Even though it seemed to take forever, Dr. Eugene was now seemingly quickly done with the introductions.
He gathered himself and began to talk to us directly.
“I cannot imagine how you feel, sitting where you are sitting…”
There was a long pause and my pastor instincts kicked in. The word “sitting” trailed off into silence. I looked over and saw there were tears running down his face.
I think I told him, “It’s OK.” I comfort people, that is what I do.
So this intimidating, scary situation just got all turned upside down. I found myself trying to ease the pain of the doctor who was in charge of “healing” my boy.
He apologized, “I am sorry.”
More silence.
“I have two little girls about the same age as Josiah. I cannot imagine, as a parent, hearing what you are about it hear.”
You may think that this caused me even more fear or trauma. Quite the opposite. I do not think I could have been more afraid about what he was going to say in that small, crowded room filled with lab coats.
But the cracked voice and those salted tears transformed this powerful, intimidating figure into a dad… just like me. He went from a person about to cast down a verdict from on high to a father who was just sitting next to me feeling a touch of what I felt. I was not alone. I was beside someone who cared and who would do all in his power to help us.
As I was about to hear the worst news of my life, I found myself grateful to the man who was giving it.
This post is a continuation of Josiah’s Journey—a blog series I have written and am rewriting to share my son’s courageous fight with pediatric cancer. I wrote a blog detailing his medical and emotional battle from April 2015 until after he passed on May 2016. I am now writing to fill in some of the informational gaps from the former blog including personal reflections. A boy or girl with cancer is a life altering experience for family, friends and the surrounding community. When the story is fully told, I plan to publish it to so it can be shared with others in their struggles and trials. Please comment or suggest a topic or ask a question so that I can connect with as many people as possible.
Related: Healing in Time | My Turn