Following a long flight from LA to Toronto in January 1996, I got a DVT - a Deep Vein Thrombosis in my right leg. I am 6 foot 4 inches and was squashed in the regular 'cattle' section with which we're sadly familiar in Economy Class on most airlines. I think I also had my large laptop computer bag under foot as well. I enjoyed a pleasant conversation with a woman older than myself and didn't move around the plane as often as I should. I don't think I'd ever heard up to that point about the dangers of flight and being in cramped quarters and the difference in oxygen and clean air in the atmosphere of such flights.

Since then, I've heard many warnings and the advice to be moderate with caffein and alchohol, drink plenty of liquids, preferably water, and all that. Between then and now, I've heard of sports players who fly a lot having such maladies and in some cases facing career-ending situations. People were getting off long distant flights and dropping dead from blood clots and thrombosi. One reporter who was embedded with troops in front line activities in the middle east, succumbed to a DVT - with attending clot and death, after being cramped for too long in the confines of an army tank.

My DVT was this. The deep major return vein in my left leg was blocked from ankle to thigh. My knee had swollen and there was a kind of knot behind it; nothing hurt. As a pastor, I was visiting a women in hospital who would shortly undergo heart surgery. 'While I'm here, I thought, I might as well check out my leg issue.' I went to Emergency, waited for ages as one does; but when I wanted to leave, the nurse encouraged me to stay because I was registered and 'in the system' - and it wouldn't be long now, and such.

The doctor said it was likely a strain (this was on a Friday afternoon), but just to be sure - 'why don't you come back Monday and we'll do a Doppler test?' I preached Sunday morning - twice; had a large church funeral service in the afternoon and when I got home after several hours of standing, my ankle was as big as my thigh normally is. So, my daughter drives me to the hospital on Monday morning, technician does the test and though she couldn't tell me anything - not supposed to, her eyes were wide with what I took to be alarm. In twenty minutes I'm admitted and in a room in Emergency with a Heparin drip in my arm and with terse instruction: - 'Do. Not. Move!' I supposed I might be in danger of some kind.

In short, I was in hospital for two weeks and 'threw' several blood clots that had broken off from the vein blockage. In fact, I threw a 'shower' of clots so that my chest X-ray showed many white dots throughout both lungs. Lucky that - or rather: 'Providence' in that it was merely a lot of little ones and not a big one or two - or I'd not likely be writing this. I was away from my usual ministry responsibilities for a year.

I go back for some tests, ready I think to return, hoping to get going again with doctor's permission and clearance after the long months of being on disabiity and now having gradually crawled back to the main road, from the swamp so-to-speak. But after tests in the same hospital, my same doctor phones and says, 'Get into Emerge right now! You're still throwing clots!'

Apparently, my chest X-Ray revealed results similar to the first ones of the previous year. Turns out I have 'elevated levels of homo-cysteine' - a big a scoundrel as bad cholesterol when it comes to messing with people's circulatory systems, with adherent clotting-inducement potential and the like.  I was off work for another 9 months before integrating gradually into full-time ministry once more. I remember deciding to go back (even if it would kill me) rather than suffer prolonged  times of disability longer term, side-lined from what I wanted to do when only 47 years old.

I've been on Coumadin (Warfarin - i.e. rat poison) ever since, in moderation of course, to thin my blood. I think that's at least partly responsible for my Raynaud's condition. It's as if my body doesn't know whether to keep parts warm or cold - so I just go blotchy red, or white-cold in various places, and put up regularly with painfullt burning fingers and toes. And that's when the circulation is returning, say under warm water, my extremeities having been white-numb, purple and grey - almost corpse-like. ('Of corpse,' you say.)

Everybody's got something wrong with them. If not now, sooner or later our beautiful bodies go bad on us. Resurrection and Re-Creation Hope takes that into account. I'm glad to be possessed of a faith that lays hold on things eternal, with conviction that the 'eternal' hope I share with millions will see all things made right, made right-side-up for full creaturely wholeness, full human flourishing. To this we aspire and for it we simply wait - some days, frankly, more patiently than others.