Dear Christel, You Were One of My Heroes

Sometimes the people who enter our lives to help us through our worst days become part of our best ones.

Dear Christel,

A few days ago, I saw your Facebook post showing your copy of my new book, *Saturday Morning Leadership*. You mentioned wanting me to sign it, and of course, I’d be honored. But seeing that post reminded me of something I’ve been thinking about since the book came out.

There are people whose stories should have been included in those pages. People who taught me more about courage, compassion, perseverance, and showing up than they probably realize.

You’re one of those people.

And to explain why, I need to take us back to May 2019.

On May 9, I checked into Lake West Hospital for what was supposed to be a fairly routine robotic colon resection to address severe diverticulitis. The surgeon would remove the diseased portion of my colon, reconnect everything, and I’d spend three to five days in the hospital before heading home. Recovery was expected to take a couple of weeks.

At least that was the plan.

Instead, complications from that first surgery led to an emergency second operation, a serious abdominal infection, an ileostomy, and a 28-centimeter open wound running down the middle of my abdomen. By the time I finally came home after thirteen days in the hospital, I was exhausted, considerably lighter, and facing a recovery that looked nothing like the one I’d imagined.

I came home with a wound VAC, a machine that uses suction to help large wounds heal. It’s an amazing piece of equipment, provided you can keep the dressing sealed.

And therein lay our first problem.

Because of the location of my abdominal incision, the plastic covering the wound kept developing leaks. The machine would lose suction, alarms would sound, and the home healthcare nurses would have to come back and try to fix it. Sometimes more than once.

You were assigned to be my regular nurse, but you happened to be on vacation when I first arrived home. Several other nurses filled in until you returned on Monday.

That was the first day we met.

You walked into our home, took one look at the situation, and came up with a solution nobody else had tried. You took part of an Eakin ring, a moldable barrier normally used to seal my ostomy appliance, and placed it along the troublesome area of my abdomen.

Problem solved.

Now, to someone reading this, that may not sound particularly impressive. But after several days of a machine that wouldn’t stop alarming and dressings that wouldn’t stay sealed, it was a pretty big deal.

And it told me something about you right away.

You weren’t content to keep doing something that wasn’t working. You looked at the problem, thought it through, and found another way.

Little did we know how much we would need that determination in the months ahead.

Every day, you came to our house to care for a wound I wouldn’t wish on anyone. The dressing had to be removed, the wound unpacked, cleaned, repacked, and sealed again. There are probably much more sophisticated medical descriptions for all of that, but from the patient’s perspective, I can tell you one thing.

It hurt.

A lot.

Some days the pain was almost unbearable. I dreaded those dressing changes, even though I knew they were necessary. Yet there you were, doing what needed to be done, trying to make a miserable experience as tolerable as possible.

And somewhere along the way, something changed.

You got to know Julie. We talked about our families, our lives, our faith, and just about anything else that came up while you were working. We laughed, shared frustrations, and prayed together. You became a familiar face in our home, someone we looked forward to seeing even when I wasn’t particularly excited about what you were there to do.

I should also mention Jody and Tiffany, two of the nurses who filled in on weekends. They were every bit as capable and compassionate, and I’m grateful for the care they provided as well.

As the weeks passed, my large abdominal wound began to heal. At least on the outside.

Unfortunately, something else was going on underneath.

By late June and into July, most of the incision had closed, but two small openings remained. They continued draining fluid, which eventually became infected. There were CT scans, drain tubes, antibiotics, appointments, and more appointments. Every time we thought we might finally be getting somewhere, another problem appeared.

You were there through all of it.

You communicated with the surgeon’s office, helped coordinate care, and shared our growing frustration as the infections continued. You could see what was happening to me. My weight was dropping, my strength was disappearing, and despite everything being done, I wasn’t getting better.

By August, things had become particularly bad.

I had been back to the surgeon, who collected a sample of the drainage to determine what bacteria we were dealing with. Another sample was taken during a CT scan. We were waiting for answers while continuing to fight an infection that simply wouldn’t go away.

Then came a terrible weekend.

I was running a fever, increasingly weak, and had lost an enormous amount of weight since the original surgery. By the time you arrived on Monday, August 19, you had seen enough.

You were concerned that I might be developing sepsis.

And you called an ambulance.

I’ve thought about that decision many times.

You could have changed the dressing, completed your paperwork, and told us to call the doctor’s office again. After all, we’d been through months of appointments and treatments already.

But you knew something wasn’t right.

You didn’t wait for another appointment or another round of antibiotics. You acted.

That ambulance ride took me back to Lake West Hospital, where another remarkable nurse helped us obtain a second opinion. I’ll tell her story another day, because she deserves one of her own.

That second opinion brought Dr. Patrick Huck into my life. During his examination, he discovered just how serious the infection had become. On August 23, he operated and found that the previous intestinal staple line had been leaking, contributing to the infection that had plagued me for months.

He addressed the infection and damaged tissue, and for the first time in a long while, I began making real progress toward recovery.

There was still a long road ahead, including another surgery in November to reverse the ileostomy. But the downward spiral had finally been interrupted.

And Christel, you played an important part in making that happen.

I’ve thought about those months many times over the past seven years. I’ve thought about the doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers who helped me survive and recover. Some of them will have their own stories told in the weeks ahead, because they deserve to be remembered too.

But today, I wanted to tell yours.

I have this photograph of the two of us standing in our kitchen on your last day of home healthcare. I’m wearing a red Snoopy T-shirt, you’ve got your nursing badge on, and we’re standing there with our arms around each other, smiling.

Looking at that picture today, I realize something. Neither of us could have imagined what the rest of 2019 would bring.

When you first walked through our door that Monday morning in May, we had never met. You were a nurse assigned to care for a man recovering from a surgical nightmare. I was a patient who needed help, and Julie was a wife trying to hold everything together while her husband struggled to get well.

But somewhere between the wound dressings, the conversations, the frustrations, the laughter, and the prayers, we became friends.

And that friendship didn’t end when the wound healed.

On October 12, 2019, our daughter Emily got married. Somewhere along the way, we’d learned that you also directed weddings. By then, you had become such a part of our lives that asking you to direct Emily’s wedding seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

Think about that for a moment. In May, you walked through our front door as a complete stranger, assigned to care for a man recovering from a surgical nightmare. Five months later, you were helping our family celebrate one of the happiest days of our lives.

Then, just two months later, life brought another unexpected turn.

Your sister passed away, and on December 21, I had the privilege of conducting her funeral service.

I’ve thought about that often. In May, you were the one showing up at our house, helping us through a season of pain and uncertainty. By December, I was the one who had an opportunity to stand beside you and your family during a season of grief.

In less than eight months, we’d walked together through serious illness, a wedding, and a funeral. We’d shared pain, laughter, prayers, celebration, and grief.

And to think, it all began because a home healthcare nurse returned from vacation and showed up at our front door one Monday morning.

Isn’t it remarkable how God brings people into our lives?

When I wrote *Saturday Morning Leadership*, I spent a great deal of time thinking about the people who shape our lives. Some are famous. Some are fictional characters whose stories stay with us from childhood. And some are ordinary people doing extraordinary things without ever thinking of themselves as heroes.

That’s where you come in, Christel.

You didn’t have to give a speech about compassion. You demonstrated it. You didn’t have to explain perseverance. You showed me what it looked like, day after day. And when the situation demanded courage and decisive action, you didn’t hesitate.

You showed up.

Not just when things were easy, but when they were painful, frustrating, messy, and frightening.

And somewhere along the way, you became someone we wanted to show up for, too.

So yes, Christel, I’d be honored to sign your copy of *Saturday Morning Leadership*. But I hope you understand that long before I ever wrote a book about leadership, you were living out some of its most important lessons right there in our home.

Thank you for your skill, your persistence, your prayers, and your friendship. Thank you for caring about Julie as well as me. Thank you for being part of Emily’s wedding. And thank you for allowing me to stand with your family when you lost your sister.

You came into our lives because I needed a nurse.

You stayed in our lives because you became a friend.

And seven years later, when I think about the people who helped me get back up, your name is near the top of the list.

With love and gratitude,

Jeff

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The Heroes Who Showed Up is a series of personal stories about the people who helped me through a life-threatening medical journey in 2019, and the lessons their compassion, courage, and presence continue to teach me.