Maggie

To be honest with you, I don't remember this woman's real name. Even if I did, I wouldn't tell you. But I'm pretty sure it's not Maggie, so let's call her Maggie. 

I was a chaplain at a large hospital, and I was working part of my shift on the acute neurology floor. I peeked my head into one of the darkened "continuous EEG" rooms - a room where they were monitoring brain signals from the patients 24/7, so as much external stimuli as possible had been eliminated. I peeked in to see how the patient was handling the intensive testing, and that's when I saw her crying in the bed. 

I walked in. 

As we talked, Maggie told me that she had some kind of undiagnosed seizure disorder that was rapidly getting worse. She couldn't seem to get through a single hour of her life without having these catastrophic seizures. The doctors had told her it would only be a matter of time - a short matter of time - before the seizures killed her. 

"That sounds really scary," I said, reaching out my hand to hold hers. As she eagerly took my hand, I continued. "What do they suggest doing about it?"

She told me the doctors were talking about doing a radical surgery in which they would sever some of the nerves in her brain and hopefully stop them from sending signals to one another. Basically, they were talking about a type of hemispherectomy. The seizures would stop, they believed, instantly. 

But the surgery was not without its risks and side effects. Most distressing for Maggie was that she was all but guaranteed to lose her short term memory as a result of the procedure. She wept as she told me that she could not fathom the idea of going through life never being able to enjoy another movie - a favorite interest of hers. How can you enjoy a movie, how can you even watch one, if you don't remember what happened five minutes ago? 

She went on, of course, to mention the social struggles of not having a short term memory. Not being able to make new connections with others. Not being able to participate in meaningful conversations. Struggling to make day-to-day decisions, even as simple as planning out a meal or doing the grocery shopping or remembering why she got in the car in the first place. 

I did not envy the spot that Maggie was in. 

We talked for more than an hour as Maggie wavered back and forth between doing nothing - a choice that would ultimately kill her, sooner rather than later - and having this radical surgery - which would make her life, in her understanding, not worth living. We talked about the pros and cons. We weighed the inevitable outcomes of both options. As soon as she would feel herself leaning in one direction, she'd do a complete 180 and come back the other way. How do you even make such an impossible choice? 

After our long back-and-forth, Maggie wiped a tear from her eye and admitted there was a potential third option. The doctor had told her that it was possible that if she could eliminate some stress from her life, if she could learn to slow down and take periods of rest, then the seizures would possibly lessen on their own. 

She could very potentially make a dramatic impact on her life - and free herself from this impossible decision - if she could just learn to rest sometimes. (Maggie was a very driven individual, very Type A.) 

"But that's not really an option," she said after she acknowledged it, dismissing it immediately. "I don't know how to stop, and I don't want to." Then she went back to wrestling with her impossible choice. 

I don't know what happened to Maggie. I don't know what choice she made. I don't know how things turned out. But I have never forgotten that conversation. Because I can be like that sometimes. It can be hard for me to slow down, to rest. 

I wonder how many impossible situations I've put myself in because of that.