But he chose to fight back with arguments and words and I'm not so much into arguing into the wee morning hours so I gave up. If I had another chance, this would be the story I would tell him.
When I was 14 I sat in that hospital bed. Right down the hall from the one we were looking at last night. I was afraid, in pain, and honestly had a moment or two thinking "what if I die from this?". I had a bad turn on a go-cart and ended up wedged underneath a van in the parking lot at my dad's office. I couldn't breathe (punctured lung) and everything seemed distant and surreal. This is shock, I assume, a state of protection for your body that protects you from feeling pain at that moment and almost gives you a sense of euphoria, from the catecholamines.
My dad threw me in the back of the car and raced me to the hospital. If you ever want to get right in without a wait, just come in sucking air and collapse on the countertop. It works.
I remember them cutting my clothes off and I didn't care, which was significant for me because I was a little Christian girl who didn't hardly wear spaghetti strap shirts. After a CT, they told my parents that a level 1 trauma center is what I needed so off I flew. Comically, the only thing I remember about that flight was that the guy nurse was cute and I cursed myself for looking so terrible on this occasion. Better luck next time.
I was admitted to the ICU, started on some fantastic drugs, and monitored for complications. Truthfully, I have almost no recollection of my time in the ICU, probably because of the medications. I can only wonder what ridiculous things I said under the influence. I'm sure my mother will never tell me.
The team was watching my blood levels, hemoglobin and hematocrit, to determine if I would need surgery because I had basically cut my liver in half inside my body. Your liver is a very vascular organ so you can bleed out quickly and drastically. They were watching for my levels to get to a certain number then they would take me to the OR and cut me open. At the time, the mortality of this surgery was close to 40%. Meaning, out of every 10 people that go in there, 4 don't come out. This is exactly what parents want to hear while they've already jumped off the cliff of sanity.
By the sheer grace and mercy of God, my blood levels got to the lowest they could go, then started coming back up. My body was healing itself and, fun fact: your liver is the only organ in your body that regenerates itself! Crazy, huh?! So my good ole liver started doing it's business, my lungs decided to grant me some air, and I got better. There were countless complications that I could have encountered but I was spared them all.
This sounds like a horrible experience to have as a young child you might say. Well, yes and no. Horrible because I couldn't hardly move my body for a month because of intense muscle spasms. Great because I basically got out of doing school for that amount of time and everyone glossed over the fact that I just didn't take my finals.
About two years later, I had a dream. In the dream, I was the patient in the bed, the same bed that I had on the floor actually. But I was also the nurse, taking care of myself. I was looking down on the scene as an observer and woke with a feeling of overwhelming sobriety, as if God had communicated a very secret and special truth to me. I didn't fully understand it at the time but soon decided to be a nurse and have never, not ever, changed my mind. Ask anyone halfway through college and they will tell you that to know what you want to do is rare and to be a nurse is arduous and time-consuming. You have to want it and I did.
Through a series of crazy, God-ordained circumstances, I now work on the same unit that I was patient. Some of the nurses remember taking care of me. I still joke with my doctor about how he told me I couldn't cheerlead for a while and I cried.
Does that sound like God didn't know what He was doing? I don't think so. I think it's hard for us to see past certain difficult, even tortuous experiences but God isn't surprised. He lets everything fall through His hands and "works for the good of those who love him, who are called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28).
I could say much more on this subject but that's for another day. I'd love to hear your thoughts. I think a testimony is about the most powerful thing that I have to offer on this subject. I know it's true because I lived it.
No comments:
Post a Comment