Love Helps Forget

Waking up from open heart surgery is quite the experience. As the anesthesia wears off, the beeping of machines fills your ears. Slowly you start to regain consciousness. Then it just hurts. After some time, you open your eyes to see where you are but the anesthesia makes you pretty groggy. Pretty much all you can put together is that you are not dead, there are a bunch of people around you, and some kind of machine keeps beeping. Eventually, the anesthesia gets out of your system and you can think clearly and quickly. My favorite part during this phase is the sick feeling usually goes away and you are ready for food. Still hurting, you step by step become yourself again. Gradually the pain subsides until you get to the point of boredom and finally you get to go home!

That is pretty much what it is like to wake up from surgery. There are many other things that go on after surgery: bandages, physical therapy (I don’t like this one), tests, tests, and even more tests. What is interesting to me is not what I remember about post op, but rather, what it is that I don’t remember. I honestly don’t remember how the pain felt after any of my surgeries. Four open heart surgeries and I can’t remember how the pain felt. I do remember that I was in more pain then I had ever before been in. I can tell you that I thought, “this must be what it feels like to get hit by a train head on.”

Now, i’m sure a social worker or psychologist has a mental or physiological explanation for this lack of remembrance; and I am not saying that those answers are wrong. But I do have my own answer for why I can’t remember how the pain felt after surgery: Love. The love that Heavenly Father has for His children. I believe that a merciful part of Heavenly Father's plan for us prevents us from exactly remembering the pains of the past. We will remember that it hurt, but not what that hurt felt like. I’m so grateful for the love Heavenly Father has for me, in allowing me to forget the pain of the past without forgetting the experience.

Living is a Team Sport

I imagine my friends were quite amused seeing me arrive home from the hospital after surgery. As I came up the street where I lived, I saw many of my friends outside waiting for me. I tried to wave but only ended up wiggling my fingers. My friends came and opened the car door and I got out to talk with them. Between the painkillers the doctors had me on and my slow movements I was very entertaining to be around. Strange comments and delayed responses kept my friends laughing for hours.

While I was not feeling very well the day I came home, the fact that my friends cared enough about me to be there and stay with me meant the world. My friends were a crucial support system for me after my fourth heart surgery. They spent a lot of time with me doing anything they could to help. On good days we would watch movies, play video games, enjoy board games, or just talk. When I was having a bad day my friends would bring me a treat or write me a card. The little things they did really made the difference for me. I am forever grateful for those trying times in my life when my friends and I were able to strengthen our friendships.

Friendships are some of the sweetest associations we will ever have in our lives. The happiest families will describe themselves as friends. The closest couples say that they married their best friend. Time and time again it always comes back to friends! When it comes down to what brings us the most joy, for me I have learned it is all about friends. In tough times or easy times, friends are what make experiences worth remembering. Friends enable one to really live; after all, living is a team sport.

Live Like you are Dying

The other day I was thinking about what it was like walking into an operating room to have open heart surgery. At 10 years old while in the preoperative waiting room the nurses offered me medication to make me drowsy, but I refused. I didn’t want to be asleep because I wanted to spend the time with my family. Many patients are nervous before surgery for various reasons. They do not know what the outcome of the operation will be, or are afraid it is going to hurt. But not me. No matter what happened, I knew that everything would be okay. This assurance, as I came to discover later, was the result of living my life as if I were about to die.

Now this does not mean that I thought I was going to die. Nor does it mean that I was ready to die. Rather, because of the way that I had lived, my conscious was clear.

When people think about how they would live like they were dying, often thoughts of all the things they want to do before they die come up. Travel to Paris, swim with a dolphin, attend a Broadway show, or stay in a five star hotel. While all these things would be wonderful to do, I have come to understand that they are not the things that constitute living like you are dying.

Throughout my life I have come up with my own definition of what it means to live like you were dying. The definition is really more of a question that you can ask yourself. When you die, what is it that you would like others to say about the person you were? I want all those who know me to describe me with similar terms. Kind, loving, faithful, trustworthy, and disciplined.

Living like you are dying is not about cramming in life experience at the very end. It is about becoming the kind of person you want to be so that you leave behind the kind of legacy you want to leave. It’s about the lives you touch and the help you render. With this definition in mind, we should all be living like we are dying, because life is short.

Learning to be a Patient Patient

At 20 years old, I found myself sitting in a hospital bed waiting to have surgery the following week. Two days earlier I was doing what every normal missionary did: teaching, working, and sweating. Now, I was laying in a bed with a monitor strapped to my chest to measure every beat of my heart. Seeing my heartbeat was usually a good thing. It meant I was alive. But this time it gave me concern. This concern came not because it was beating but because of how fast it was beating, 300 beats per minute. At that rate, my energy level went down substantially.

As a missionary you are expected to live by certain rules. These rules make sense and help keep you safe and focused. They guide and direct the way you live as a missionary. On the flip side, when you are not a missionary, living all the mission rules prevents living what most consider to be “a normal life.” Since I was technically a missionary but was not doing what missionaries typically do, I found myself faced with some difficulties.

I was not allowed to watch t.v., listen to music, read non mission approved literature, or play any kind of video games. Normally this would not bother me; I kept busy with missionary life, but being confined to a bed, I found that I could only read the few books I had access to for only so long. I became incredibly bored.

The thought of having to wait like this for five days at first killed me. How was I going to make it without any entertainment? As I sat there thinking a thought came into my mind. “Patience is made.” With that thought in mind, I began looking for ways to productively entertain myself without relying on technology. I sought out people to talk with so that I might learn their stories, and I found that not only would they share their stories, but I could also share mine. Opportunities for “unusual” missionary interactions came flooding in!

In the course of mutual sharing, I learned that being patient doesn’t mean waiting without complaining; being patient means filling the time you have with productive activities. In life, patience is required of all of us, whether we are “in-patients” or “out-patients.” Learning how to be a patient patient is truly one of the most important things any of us can ever learn.

A Living Hope

While I was serving as a missionary in Washington D.C., my heart problems began to act up. Without warning my heart would abandon its calm pace of 70 beats per minute (bpm) and begin to race at 300 bpm. This unusual pace or “arrhythmia” as doctors call it, almost entirely incapacitated my ability to do normal missionary work. After my heart went into an arrhythmia, I would travel to the hospital where they would (1) admit me, (2) talk with my doctors, and (3) shock me (cardioversion) to fix my heart. Two to three hours after I was shocked the hospital would release me. This pattern happened three different times. The fourth time my heart went into an arrhythmia, this pattern broke, and the greatest missionary opportunities I had during my mission occurred while I was a patient at Children's National Medical Center.

One of these great missionary opportunities came as I found myself wandering through quiet hospital halls. Because I was a missionary, I couldn’t watch television or listen to music, so I spent a lot of time walking around the cardiac unit. As I rounded one corner, I saw a young Hispanic couple sitting on the floor crying. My eyes went from the couple into the room they were next to where I saw the cause of such sadness, a newborn fighting to live. I continued forward until I reached the couple. Without saying a word I sat down next to them. It must have been odd to have a young white guy wearing a hospital gown, who you have never before met, sit down next to you. After a few moments I looked at them and said, pointing to their child, “That used to be me, but look at me now.” These parents began to open up to me and talked with me. As I explained my story to them I began to see a hope developing in their eyes.

I am convinced that this experience was no coincidence. The opportunity I had to share my story of struggle and triumph with this family that was just embarking on a lifelong journey brought me so much joy. I couldn’t help but pray that they would be able to feel God’s love through their trials; I think they could. As I walked away from this couple, the mother shouted, “Eres mi esperanza!” Which translated into English is, “You are my hope!”

The Timing of the Lord

When I was 16 years old, I was scheduled for open heart surgery at Primary Children’s Hospital. The surgery that was to be performed was quite risky. Due to the high level of risk, I was to be the only cardiac patient having surgery that day and the only one coming into the CICU. On top of the three pediatric cardiothoracic surgeons from Primary Children’s Hospital, a fourth surgeon was coming in from another hospital. Needless to say, this was going to be a big deal. The day before the operation was to be performed we received a phone call from my cardiologist informing us that the lead surgeon no longer felt good about performing the operation and had cancelled the surgery. As I listened to my doctor my heart just sank. I began to think, “If this team of surgeons feels that my surgery is too risky to perform, will anyone else be willing to do the surgery?”

A few days after my surgery was cancelled my cardiologist called us to tell me about the new plan. He said they had referred my case to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. We were told it would most likely take a few weeks for them to get back to us and that hopefully we would be able to schedule surgery roughly six months later. The next day we were contacted by the Mayo Clinic and within two weeks we flew out the Minnesota to prepare for surgery just fourteen days after the operation at Primary Children’s Hospital was cancelled.

I never have nor will I ever believe in coincidences. This experience testified to me personally that Heavenly Father is well aware of what we need when we need it. If we trust in Him, no matter what His timing may be, everything truly will work out for our best in the end.

Peacefully Powerful

I flew into rochester Minnesota on a beautiful Friday morning. The weather was almost perfect. It was pleasantly cool and sunny outside. I would have enjoyed the climate more had I not been so preoccupied with what was to come the following week. I flew out to Minnesota to have open heart surgery at St. Mary’s hospital, the hospital associated with the world famous mayo clinic. This was not my first open heart surgery. I have had a few surgeries prior to this one, but this one was different. This time, I was old enough to understand all of the risks associated with the operation.   

While my days during surgery prep were not bad, I found the nights were a new challenge for me. My anxiety and nervous thoughts kept me up at night. After taking sleeping meds, drinking warm drinks, and listening to soothing music, I still could not fall asleep. Finally I had a thought, I thought that I needed to listen to the Book of Mormon every night until I fell asleep. When night came and it was time to sleep I began listening to the Book of Mormon. As usually happens when I read the Book of Mormon, a peace came into my life. This peace gradually began to work on me and with the accompanying warmth of my bed, I quickly fell asleep.


I have heard it said that it’s not the experience that teaches you, it is a reflection on the experience that teaches you. As I think back on this experience with listening to the Book of Mormon I am amazed at the effect the spirit had on me. Though the feelings that came as I listened to the Book of Mormon were not intense or grabbing, they subtly calmed me down. Before I knew it, sleep that was not obtainable in any other way came by the peacefully powerful effect of the spirit.