Dr. Mortara's tears...

The Webster Dictionary definition for compassion is embracing the pain of another; a touching desire to help; expressing words of comfort especially when one has suffered a loss; showing tender concern by entering another's emotional experience.

Two days before Christmas I had my second spine surgery where again everything went wrong nearly paralyzing me.  Nineteen hours in I suddenly began bleeding out very heavily and I almost died, through no fault of my surgeon.

Immediately following surgery a massive hematoma formed, pressing on my spinal cord slowly paralyzing me.  My dear orthopaedic surgeon, Dr. Mortara, rushed back in to then do a four hour emergency surgery to remove the hematoma.  So we ended up being in surgery for twenty-three hours that day.

Dr. Mortara has featured in two other blogs here where I have shared the very humorous bond we had bantering back and forth with each other.  Like when I fractured my tailbone in two places after my horse Bashum stumbled while galloping.  I feared Dr. Mortara would be upset.  Instead he came in laughing, teasing me how I couldn't just fracture my tailbone in one place, but two.  I then responded I liked to think BIG.  He not only loved my attitude but the ways I didn't let my dwarfism define me.  And that I was a fighter.  I had been his patient for several years prior to the spine surgery, so we knew each other quite well by then.

Two days after the spine surgery in ICU on Christmas Day I finally awoke...just in time to see Dr. Mortara coming.  He looked terrible.  He was very anxious to 

see if I still had any movement in my legs.  As hard as I tried only some toes on my right foot moved.  

I already knew what had happened as I was the one who alerted them in recovery something was terribly wrong immediately following the nineteen hour surgery, which is when the massive hematoma was discovered.

Suddenly I was shown just how much I had come to mean to Dr. Mortara as a patient because tears began pouring down his face while he struggled to say, "Everything was going so well, and then the bleeding from out of nowhere happened.  Then this...this terrible hematoma.  You have your horse, your work, such a full life...and..."  

He then began choking up and crying so hard I began choking up too, yet not for me...him!  I was profoundly touched by his concern and deeply moved by his tears.

Though there were tubes everywhere and I was so weak, I managed to grab hold of his hand.

"Dr. Mortara, none of this is your fault.  WE are going to surmount this, okay?  I've got movement in those toes, and that's a beginning.  I will be focusing on my toes until they all move, then my feet, and legs just like I did the first time this happened.  When I leave this building, I will walk out of it.  And I WILL be galloping on Patches again."

Then he cried harder!

Through his tears though, Dr. Mortara managed to tell me it was because he was so moved by MY comforting HIM!  He had been feeling utterly devastated.

"Adelaide, that your fighting spirit hasn't been lost is the best Christmas gift I have been given.  And I believe you WILL walk again.  When you leave this place I will be right there to walk with you."

Two months later, I did and he did.  

Only due to hospital protocol I was made to ride in a wheelchair TO the door.  It had taken me two months 

of very hard work just to be able to do my hard won "shuffle" by then.  So slowly, as Dr. Mortara let me lean on him, I was escorted to the waiting ambulance taking me home, as a host of nurses, doctors, and cleaning staff who had come to know me too, were all clapping.

 

Compassion is the most healing of all our emotions, though not everyone has it.  Yet for those who do, compassion is quite powerful because it transforms lives.  Especially the way it did for a beloved surgeon 

in an ICU Unit one Christmas Day in tears...