Inauguration

Like basically all of life, recovering from an organ transplant can often be a dull game of one step forward, two steps back.  On Wednesday of this week, Annaka was eating like a champ and well on her way for an end-of-week discharge.  A day later, after being unable to keep hardly any calories down and sleeping nearly all day, the doctors had to reevaluate her condition, assuming she had picked up a flu virus.  Considering that her immune system is shot, the set back is well within the range of typical, but frustrating, nonetheless.

Nancy, too, had to return to Pittsburgh midweek so doctors could evaluate why her incision isn’t healing as quickly as they’d like.  She is back home now but with instructions to return to Pittsburgh next week.  Her setback is also within the parameters of normal, but that doesn’t make it not hurt. 

This past year has been one of intense inner focus for us—as might be expected from a family dealing with such a serious medical issue—as we’ve learned to deal with the many slips and stumbles that come with Annaka’s diagnosis.  Through necessity, we’ve kept much of our attention on immediate concerns, like laundry washing and bottle scrubbing, diaper changing and medicine taking.

Regardless, the outside world bangs at the door, regardless of what kind of day Annaka is having.  What happens outside our home still happens, whether we choose to pay attention to it or not.

Like much of America, we are anxious about what happens next.  Today is the day, after all.  We began the day with one President and end it with another.  Tomorrow the campaign promises are expected to start becoming reality. 

And the reality is, the Affordable Care Act, despite its myriad flaws and labyrinth policies, did provide at least two crucial, life-saving aids for someone like Annaka.   For one, the legislation removed health insurance coverage limits.  Prior to its enactment, companies could limit the lifetime payout for the insured.  What this meant for someone like Annaka was the day might eventually come when she had hit her limit and every expense would become out-of-pocket.  Considering that it costs hundreds of dollars every time a doctor walks into the hospital room, considering that her condition is not ever really going away, that was a pretty big deal for us. 

The ACA also removed the burden of preexisting conditions.  Annaka, of course, even though she worked really hard in utero and followed all the rules, had a pre-existing condition before she was even born.  Without this rule in place, it’s plausible no insurance company would have provided her with insurance once she became an adult. 

Thus, when the man elected to the highest national office has vowed to immediately dismantle this admittedly flawed legislation, we take his election quite personally, as should all Americans.

Now, to be fair, our new President has said that he does not intend to remove all vestiges of Obamacare when he takes office, only the bad parts.  We are hoping those two aforementioned ideas, which seem pretty humane, if nothing else, continue as part of whatever crusade the new leadership replaces them with.

Regardless, these are unsettling times.  You didn’t click on this link to read a political commentary, however, on today, of all days, so I will stop.

Yes, this past year has been one of intense inner focus, but that has been possible because of you. We have been able to take care of Annaka these past thirteen months now because everyone else, it seems, has been picking up the slack everywhere else.

From the meals to the benefits, from the prayers to the gifts, we have been drenched in kindness.  From the surgeons to the nurses, from the custodians to the cooks, we have been saturated by expertise, saturated by folks just doing their job but doing it unbelievably well, and with admirable passion.

What strikes me about all of those gifts, though, is that people can be kind regardless of who is President.  People can be gracious and giving, can be really good at their job, day in and day out, and it doesn’t matter at all who lives in the White House.

That’s because America is very much more than just our frazzled government and our embattled institutions, or even our traditions and ideals.

For example, America is Annaka’s surgeon, who immigrated here years ago so he could save her life and the life of those like her.

America is Nancy and her family, who gave and gave and give without blinking, and it’s also all the teachers I work with who have helped us more times than I can count.

America, interestingly enough, is also those free Steelers hats we got that one day, and it’s the tricky highway charging out of Pittsburgh.  That talkative janitor at the rest stop in Indiana, who was a war veteran and had probably seen too much hell, but he was kind and needed to tell me that I shouldn’t wear a hood with a hat on, because it would distract me from driving.  That guy is America, too.  Big time.

I’m going to refrain, now, from going all Walt Whitman on you because I don’t have the poet’s talent.  The broader point I want to make, with the limited time remaining, is that everything is going to be OK.

Annaka has had many doctors in the last thirteen months, and a majority of the heavy hitters were born in foreign countries.  Most of her Pittsburgh surgeons were immigrants; her surgeon from St. Louis was born in Ireland, another doctor was from Germany, another doctor from Peru.  They’re Americans now, but they were born outside our borders.  This geography lesson is actually relevant, because it suggests very strongly something that many of us might have forgotten over the course of this challenging election season:  America, too, is going to be OK.

Brilliant people with life-saving skills are not in the habit of flocking to crumbling nations.  These professionals are among the most talented pediatric liver doctors on earth.  They can work anywhere, but they choose to work in America. 

That is very important to remember, because if you pay too much attention to our pockets of national media, if you focus too much on your Facebook feed, you get dizzy.  You stumble around in vertigo, shocked that even your walls are still standing, convinced that any day now our 21^st century civil war will cut loose and consume us all in a fire of ideological mercantilism.

Guess what, though?  There’s no fire.  Does America have problems?  Yeah, it’s a country full of people on a planet full of more people.  Of course it has problems.  You know what’s interesting, though?  Annaka has had close to fifty different nurses over the course of this year.  Almost all of them were excellent; not a single one said a word about the election.  We spent hours and hours with these professionals at all times of the day and night, and they seriously never mentioned Trump or Clinton one time.

Funny, isn’t it?  The most contentious election ever, and they didn’t have an opinion?  Of course they had an opinion.  They were intelligent young people with backgrounds in medicine; they probably had all kinds of thoughtful ideas.  They were taking care of us, though, they were performing their role, and their role didn’t require ideological dogma.

To be clear, I am not advocating silence or apathy as the marks of good citizenship.  We do have a responsibility to speak up.  Civil debate and even civil disobedience are often necessary components of a healthy democracy.  (As an aside, civil disobedience does not include property damage.)

However, there is also something tremendously patriotic about just doing your job really, really well. 

You are so valuable to this nation and to your community when you lean into your role, really dig into what your calling is, roll up your sleeves, and work.

We have seen so many people who are so good at their jobs these past thirteen months, it’s hard to be pessimistic about the next four years or the next eight years or the next sixteen.  We have been so inundated with charity and kindness this past year, worrying about the future just seems out of line.

So, in closing, Donald Trump didn’t cause this mess, he’s a symptom of it, and yes, it’s absurd we’re at the point where we actually elected him.  But we did.  He’s President. 

Regardless, in times like these I personally take great comfort in the third verse of Psalm 146: “Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save.”

 The rest of that chapter has a lot to say, too.