Sometimes You Just Got To Cut It Out

“That was one of the biggest procedures I do while someone is awake.  You have a very high pain tolerance,” the doctor remarked at the post-op appointment.

See, four weeks earlier I had a vein, that stretched from my ankle to my upper thigh, pulled out of my leg in numerous sections with only a topical anesthetic.  I watched the whole thing.  Sort of.  I was only able to look through veiled eyes.  It was hard to look at.

Yet, the story starts well before Fall of 2023….it began in one of the happiest moments of my life.  Jeff and I had longed to have children and we had been met with heartache and disappointment, yet 2009 was different.  I had carried this child to the halfway point of gestation and this welcomed internal visitor brought along with an unwelcomed side effect of pregnancy — a bulging varicose vein in my right leg.  This unsightly guest was tolerated because a mom will endure anything to bring a healthy baby into this world. 

After giving birth to a wonderful and beautiful baby girl and adjusting to the life of a mom, one of my first questions to the doctor was how to get rid of this lingering settler that the doctor had assured me would sojourn on out of here after pregnancy.

It did not.

In fact, there were two more pregnancies after the first miracle and the doctor said there was nothing that could be done about this vein until I was finished having children.

The once unsightly newcomer became a settler as I would have to learn to just live with it.  And live with it I did.  I never wore shorts again, because it’s presence made me uncomfortable, but everyday went on without much of a hitch as I began to hardly notice it….until I did.

See, it wasn’t satisfied to just remain the same.  It began to grow….first down my leg….then up my leg….then down to my ankle…..then it would throb in pain.  I started noticing it more often…yet, it was just a part of living. 

Fast forward – fourteen years.  Yes, fourteen years I prayed my vein away, but I just believed it would be apart of my daily living….until I had had enough.

One day this past summer, I was in such pain and swelling after a week away at camp, that I decided to seek medical advice.  The doctor examined me, took ultrasounds of my leg, and determined a course of treatment.  He said it would take six sessions to help my leg, but he thought that it would be a good outcome.  He advised that the first session would be bad, the second session would be excruciating and the final four sessions would be a cakewalk compared to the others.  I scheduled my appointments for the fall and thought about chickening out several times….yet through the encouragement of my husband and the desire for relief, I went.

The first session was bad.  But, I was laying on my stomach and couldn’t see much of the procedure, so I toughed it out. 

The second session was truly excruciating.  He began to make small incisions up and down my leg….would throw in some local anesthetic….pull out the vein and cut it out – doing this over a dozen times up and down my leg.  A few times I remember saying it was too much.  The doctor didn’t listen.  He still kept cutting it away.  I thought it was too much.  He thought it was just right.

As soon as the hour was over, he looked at me as he bandaged my entire leg – from top to bottom — and he told me that was the most intense vein he had dealt with under local anesthetic.  I didn’t know whether to be proud or to cry. 

I did both.

At the follow up appointment, after all the sessions of treatment, he looked at my leg and was overjoyed at the results and I was just as pleased. 

This was a spiritual lesson for me as much as it was a medical procedure.  See, I deal with zero pain in my leg now.  Zero.  I deal with zero swelling at the sight of the vein.  Zero.  Yet, I had just put up with the pain and the swelling for years….to the point that I didn’t even know how much pain I was in.  I’m so thankful the doctor didn’t listen to my pleas for him to ease up or to just leave a portion of the vein in there.  As I look down at my healed leg, I know that it was worth it.

I just wonder how often I do this with God.  Asking him to stop the pain when we are just about ready to see the results we’ve so longed for.  Maybe even the results we’ve prayed for for over fourteen years.  Or maybe, we just put up with pain and it almost become our normal and God is bidding us to bring it to Him and He has a respite from pain that we can’t even imagine.