wow, this is great!!! thanks so much for all this, the Lord is to be praised!!!wow, thank you, really. this story is ministering so much to me, i'm so glad you showed so much grace at the hospital, God is honored in you.boy, He sure is good.
My one granddaughter was in a stroller and it was not to long before I could push her all the way to the end of the lane and back again and all of it started with setting a goal to reach every day, one day at a time. I believe there is a lesson here somewhere.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,Thank you all for your kind words and encouragement. I must apologize for the time lapse since my last post. I have been in the hospital with pneumonia and was not up to posting. Im home and feeling much better, though I do have problems staying awake which is either the medication Im on or old age. :-?I must add how much we appreciate your prayers for my family and me as we continue our walk with our Lord; may He bless and keep each one of you in His love, mercy and grace. Now I will continue with: Yea, Though I Walk Through the Valley Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Psalm 23:4My How Time FliesHow quickly those three weeks flew by and oh how I dreaded what was ahead. The first kidney surgery will be the easy one; the first will be the easy one. Over and over again it would play in my head and now it was time for the second kidney surgery; if the first one was the easy one then Im not going back for the second one I told my dear wife.She looked at me smiling and said, so you are just going to give up and die; why not trust the Lord, He brought you through the first one and He is able to see you through this one.Yes, you are right my dear, but it would be much better if He would just heal me; much better for whom she asked. Ok, here we go again, but Im going under protest.So that I do not bore you all with repetition, everything for the second surgery followed the same routine as the first. Everything seemed to go smoother the second time around as we were able to bypass many of the pitfalls of the first. What a difference it made not to have a pounding headache, simply because I took some Excedrin before we left home; so I guess second trips do have some advantages, but they would all be soon forgotten. Look At All the LightsI remember praying with my wife and one of my sons before they took me into surgery and I was actually awake this time when then took me into the surgical room. Wow, what a place, I have never seen so many different kinds and shapes of lights and then all went dark.My dear wife tells me that I was in surgery seven hours and that I spent five hours in the recovery room while they were trying to get my pain under control. So I was gone from her for twelve hours, which she said seemed an eternity and to think I never knew I was gone, seemed as though I had taken a nap but with a very unpleasant waking.The tumor had grown around blood vessels and tubes in the center of my right kidney, thus it was very time consuming to remove. They literally removed the center of my kidney leaving the blood vessels and tubes and after placing a gasket like material between the two quarters that were left; sutured it back together. To think that ten years prier to this they would have simply removed both kidneys and I would be on dialysis, as kidney saving surgery was not then an option.Oh the PainI remember waking up in the recovery room and a nurse looked at me and said you are really hurting arent you? I said yes, how do you know and she said I can see it in you eyes. So for five hours they tried to get the pain under control and when I was sent up to my room a nurse had to be there at all times through the night in case I stopped breathing because of the amount of pain meds they were giving me to try and control the pain. Psalm 150:6 Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord. In spite of this I remember arriving at my room, my dear wife being there and when they were getting ready to slide me over into my bed I looked over and their were two big black nurses who took hold of the sheet to pull me over and on the count of three, pull me over they did; I do believe I flew into that bed and the one nurse said well praise the Lord! Now this is all I remember of my arrival to my room, but my dear wife says I looked at that nurse and asked, did you say praise the Lord? And she said yes sir I did and I said well praise the Lord and we began to have a praise session right there in my hospital room. Well Praise the Lord!The shame of it is that I do not remember any of this, but my dear wife, my son and the nurse, who was the head nurse by the way, say it happened. So I know that it did and we made up for it other times when she would come into my room. She was truly a wonderful sister in the Lord, who I believe He sent there just for me and my family in our time of need. Well Praise the Lord! He is truly Faithful who Promised.Continued:
Yea, Though I Walk Through the Valley Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Psalm 23:4If it was not for the Lord Well morning arrived and I lived through the night, but as I began to come out from under the high doses of pain meds I almost wished I hadnt. Oh what pain, and the button for pain meds could not be pushed often enough to keep up with the pain.My dear wife said I was pushing the button every couple minutes and she did not have the heart to tell me it only worked every eight. Well the dear lady from the night before was off duty for a couple of nights and oh what long nights they were; but the Lord gave us another blessing in the day nurse. She loved the Lord and immediately told me she knew exactly how much pain I was in, as she had donated a kidney a year earlier. She took very good care of us and was there during the day shift my entire stay in the hospital.Everything was so much different with this surgery and the effects of it would not soon go away. I had IVs in my arms, two in one arm and also one in my foot. There was a drainage tube coming from my right kidney, going into a bottle or something and of course the catheter tube and bag. I was pretty well tied down with all these extra appendages.Before we were too far into day two, my veins began to fail and this only added more pain. Yah I know, I complain allot, but you would have to experience this to know what Im talking about. My veins that failed became very hard like they were solid rods in your arms and they would just throb and ache.The night nurse came in and did a procedure where they irrigate all the tubes running in or out of me. Well that was bad, but the one that really hurt was when she put the drainage tube from my kidney between her two fingers, squeezed it together and pulled down stripping it, as she called it, to keep it from clogging up. It literally felt like she was taking my right kidney and my right collar bone out through that tube. The day nurse started to do the same thing and saw me hurting and ask what was wrong, I told her how it felt and she said the end of the tub was against something and it was causing a suction which caused the pain. So she stopped doing it, but not the night nurse, oh how I dreaded for night to come, de pain, oh de pain.Well the end of the second day they removed the IVs in my feet and one arm and the got me up and sat me in a chair for awhile, this was kind of a relief though I dreaded what this meant, the pain machine would be going soon and so it did. Now I would receive four pain pills every four hours, well they soon figured out that this was not enough and began to give me shots of morphine every four hours between the pills. Well I was up walking the halls at 8:30 PM, carrying two bags and my wife pushing the IV stand. We would walk one way come back to my room I would sit in the chair for awhile and then I would try to get back in bed, the pain was to severe to stay in bed so I would get back up and sit in the chair for awhile. Soon we would walk the other way down the hall and go through the whole routine over again. The only relief was for about a half hour after they gave me the morphine, finally my dear wife had enough and called the nurse again for the ? time and told her they had to do something as I could not go on like this, she said they would call the doctor. Well after an eternity it seemed a young woman walked into my room and said, well you cant be in to much pain if you are up sitting in a chair at 4:30 in the morning my dear wife put her hand I my shoulder as to say dont. I looked at her dumb founded, what did she just say? I just looked at her with thoughts of strangulation running through my mind; my dear wife then brought me back to reality when she said; could it possible be the reason he is up sitting in a chair at 4:30 in the morning is because he is in so much pain.Well my name is doctor so and so and Im an intern here at the hospital and I have never seen such a thing. I said young lady you have now and when you are as old as us you will have seen a lot more, now could I please get something for this pain. I will call the doctor and see, but we are already giving you a large amount. Thank you I said and she left the room and we were up and walking again. Soon the nurse came with another shot of morphine and said the doctor had order it for every two hours now, praise the Lord it did help a little more and by then anything that helped take away the pain was welcome.Brothers and Sisters, this is something that caused me to really question, how much pain would we be able to take without the Lord? Those who are alive in the Lord will soon be put in situations they never dreamed of, the suffering could be more than any man can bear. If you have not given your all to the Lord now and you have the idea that you will do so when things go bad, you are sadly mistaken. When you are suffering more than you have ever suffered in your life and you are given a choice if you deny your faith it will all go away, do you really believe you will make your stand for the Lord then? If you do it is evident that you have never suffered severe pain.My dear wife and I prayed together many times for the Lord to ease the pain I was suffering and when it came down to it I had to simply say, Lord I cannot stand it any longer, do not let me out of your hands, keep me in your hands Lord and He did.What will one do that is not in His hands, who has been playing church and games with the Lord, with the idea of I can always get serious if things go bad? Can you, or will you hear Him say, you were never in my hands I never knew you?Now is the time to seek the Lord, while He may be found; tomorrow may truly be too late.Continued:
Brothers and Sisters,this is something that caused me to really question, how much pain would we be able to take without the Lord? Those who are alive in the Lord will soon be put in situations they never dreamed of, the suffering could be more than any man can bear. If you have not given your all to the Lord now and you have the idea that you will do so when things go bad, you are sadly mistaken.When you are suffering more than you have ever suffered in your life and you are given a choice if you deny your faith it will all go away, do you really believe you will make your stand for the Lord then? If you do it is evident that you have never suffered severe pain. My dear wife and I prayed together many times for the Lord to ease the pain I was suffering and when it came down to it I had to simply say, Lord I cannot stand it any longer, do not let me out of your hands, keep me in your hands Lord and He did.What will one do that is not in His hands, who has been playing church and games with the Lord, with the idea of I can always get serious if things go bad? Can you, or will you hear Him say, you were never in my hands I never knew you? Now is the time to seek the Lord, while He may be found; tomorrow may truly be too late.
Now is the time to seek the Lord, while He may be found; tomorrow may truly be too late.
how much pain would we be able to take without the Lord? Those who are alive in the Lord will soon be put in situations they never dreamed of, the suffering could be more than any man can bear. If you have not given your all to the Lord now and you have the idea that you will do so when things go bad, you are sadly mistaken. When you are suffering more than you have ever suffered in your life and you are given a choice if you deny your faith it will all go away, do you really believe you will make your stand for the Lord then?
_________________Sandra Miller
Yea, Though I Walk Through the Valley Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Psalm 23:4Remember Doctor StrangeDo you remember the young doctor who was involved in the clinical study, in fact he was in charge of this study of the methods of cooling the kidney while the blood supply is cut off during surgery. It must have been about 9am and he walks into my room, says hello and he sits down in a chair. He just sat there staring at us and finally my dear wife asks him, is there something we can help you with? He says no I just stopped in to see how things are going. I told him that things were going fairly well except for the pain. He asked, pain from your incisions? Some pain is from my incisions but the real pain is coming from deep inside and seems to have something to do with the drainage tube. He said let me check and see if we might be able to remove it.We will test the fluid from the drain and if it is clear of urine we should be able to remove it. I told him that would be great, maybe then I could get some rest. I will check and see what we can do, anything else he asked. No I guess that is all except going home would really be nice if we could get this pain under control, I told him. Ok lets see about the drainage tube and then we will see about you going home. He then just sat there saying nothing, just looking at my chart, then sitting it down and picking it back up and looking at it again. After several repetitions of him doing this I asked him, doctor is there something else, he looked at me and said yes, I have a question. Then there was complete silence and we all just sat there looking at each other. Finally I asked him, well doctor what is your question? He looked at us and said, I have been wondering why the two of you are so different?We all laughed kind of nervously and my dear wife said, what do you mean so different? Well, in the last three weeks your husband has been through two major surgeries, and who knows what the future holds but through this whole period of time I have observed you two and I cannot help but notice that you two are different and I am just wondering why. Again we asked him what he meant by different. Well what makes you two so kind and considerate to each other and everyone you come in contact with? Why do you seem to be happy most all of the time, when it seems everything is going against you? Why are you different from other people? My dear wife and I looked at each other and in unison said the Lord Jesus Christ, He is our Lord and Saviour and all we do that is good comes from Him.He looked at us and said really and we said yes really. He then said well you two have a wonderful day and he left. We looked at each other and said oh my we scared him away.After he left we prayed for him and thanked the Lord that he had only allowed the young doctor to see us in His glorious light for if he had seen us in ourselves he would have been disappointed.We thank the Lord that this was not the end of our dear doctor friends questions but only the beginning, we would see more of him before we left the hospital. Praise God for He is faithful who promised.Psalm 118:29 O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. Continued:
Pastor,Your story illustrates the point that Christian faith shines the brightest during hard, painful times. Is it not because it is during those times that we have exhausted all of our own strength and are now operating on supernatural power/strength? And that is what this researcher saw..We eagerly await the next installment..this is getting more wonderful...ginnyrose
wow wow wow!!!!!look at God bring the fire!!!!!praise You, beautiful One!