Reality Check #2

Yesterday was my weekly visit to the Dialysis Center. Usually there aren't any other patients in the waiting area and I don't wait very long before being led back to the treatment area. Yesterday was very different. A woman came in and signed the log in sheet. She appeared to be younger than myself and I felt brave enough to start a conversation with her. I asked how long she had been doing PD (peritoneal dialysis) and she said since March. She then went on to tell me how rough life was for her at the moment. A single mother of a teenage boy and girl, a boyfriend who was cheating on her and she was in the process of stalking him and taking pictures with her cell phone. Trying to veer the conversation away from her boyfriend situation, I asked if she had ever done hemodialysis. She told me they had operated to put the access in for hemo but that it had closed up the day after surgery and PD was the only option available to her. When I asked her if she was on the transplant list, her reply shocked me. She said she was tired of dealing with life and her situation and she wanted to just stop the PD and let nature take it's course and that she had told the doctors she didn't want to go on the list. WOW. After getting her catheter inserted she ran away for 6 months until the doctors finally caught up with her. And here I thought I was bad at putting my head in the sand! My heart broke as she told me that everyday she asks God why He is mad at her. I reassured her that God was not mad at her and had not brought this on her. She wasn't ready to hear that and went up to the receptionist to recount the latest on the boyfriend situation. The comment was made she was gonna get locked up for doing something stupid eventually about this guy. By this time, I'm thinking "Please God, get me back in the treatment area and don't let me be here if she decides to bring a gun!" Her normal appointments are every Thursday and I questioned her why she came every week. Her response again surprised me. She said she doesn't do it right so she had to come weekly. My first thought was, WHY? I don't know what she meant by she wasn't doing it right but surely after almost a year that could've been worked out. When they called me back, my mind was so full of the conversation and hopelessness of her that I walked in without a moment's hesitation, got weighed and sat in my treatment chair and looked up. Caddy corner from me was a person on hemodialysis. The nurses that surrounded that and one other hemodialysis patient were decked out in lab coats that reached the ground and clear plastic visors that remind me of welder masks. At this point my head started to spin but then my nurse, Sandra came in and shut the curtain. I knew God was showing me through all of this of just how good I have it. Never has it come to my mind to ask God why me? I know that in the Garden of Eden when sin entered the world, a dominoe effect was started of things breaking down. Being involved in the charismatic church for awhile was always interesting. I can't tell you how many times I was told that I either didn't have enough faith to be healed or I had sin in my life preventing me from being healed. It didn't seem to matter that I had been healed of some of the effects of diabetes like blindness being the most dramatic. Realization started to set in with me that miracles sometimes come instantenously but sometimes they come over time. I dealt with the blindness for about a year and at one point needed surgery because of my retina starting to detach. What happens with diabetics is that over time they develope new blood vessels in their retinas but they are very weak. These vessels start to leak a fluid before they hemmorage. Laser treatments are given to help sear the new vessels into not hemmoraging. Both of my eyes continously hemmoraged for about 9 months. Eventually the blood will become reabsorbed into the macula but poses the threat of pooling to the point where the weight of the blood detaches your retina. I had gotten to that point and surgery was scheduled. A partner at the law firm I worked at had taken an interest in my situation. He wanted me to get a second opinion before I went ahead with the surgery. Little did I know that he had scheduled this second opinion with the world's greatest eye surgeon who had operated on Sugar Ray Leonard and the head of the U.S.S.R. at the time. Before this second opinion appointment my attitude was one of God you can just take this away from me. The surgery would be performed while I was awake and they would insert a needle into each of my eyes and suction out the blood. Need I say more after the needle part? That was enough to have me kicking and screaming at the thought. Somewhere along the way I realized that God worked miracles through medical science too. That it was no less miraculous to be healed based on knowledge that doctors had. That ultimately God had given that knowledge whether they admitted to it or not. A peace came over me as I realized this and I was ready to go into that operation. It was at that time I had my miraculous, instant healing. When I showed up for my second opinion appointment with copies of all the tests that had been done previously, the team of doctors looked at the records and agreed that surgery was needed but wanted to see how things had progressed since the last set of tests. They dialated my eyes and put on what I call their head gear with a bright light and a hand held super magnifier and they began to look. Medical terminology started flowing excitedly out of these men and I didn't understand a word. But there was an excitement in the air. Finally after 3 doctors looked and conferred they told me that my eyes no longer resembled what the previous tests were showing. My retina was attached with no signs of tearing and the blood was being reabsorbed at an enormous rate. No surgery was needed. Praise God! I still see a retina specialist every year and each time come away with the news that new vessels are no longer growing in my eyes and the specialist doesn't believe I'll have any more issues. Feeling sorry for myself is rarely an issue that I have to deal with. Today I was again reminded of just how blessed I am even if I do have to do dialysis. With God all things are possible.