Some Things I've Learned From Major Surgery

In God's economy, no experience has
to go to waste.

1. You can never take your life or health for granted. I was assured that the survival rate for heart bypass patients was near 99%, yet I'll never forget the relief I experienced when I first became awake after five hours of anesthesia. It felt like I was coming out of a dimly-lit tunnel into the dawn of a new day. "We're going to take out your breathing tube," I was told, "and you'll be breathing on your own." After a labored breath or two, I realized I was going to be OK, an unforgettable moment.

2. Having strong family support is priceless. Alma Jean, my most faithful supporter, and I were blessed to have our daughter and our oldest son accompany us to the University of Virginia Medical Center early on the morning of July 5. To actually have them be able to stay with me (either in my room or at the nearby guest house) for the first several days of my stay was a blessing beyond belief.

3. And how I thank God for the countless friends, neighbors and members of our church family who have showered us with prayers, cards, visits, food and other favors too numerous to count. It was like having an assembly of angels responding to our every need.

4. Health care professionals are worth their weight in gold. Before, during and after my hospital stay, scores of doctors, nurses, med techs, lab techs, x-ray techs and other care providers each did their best to help me get through the process of healing in the most expeditious way possible.

5. Above all, I gained a new appreciation of a loving God and Great Physician who designed the human body in such an amazing way, then gifted myriads of people who have helped perfect the current state of medical treatment to help us when it is injured or fails. Yet even the most well trained humans can only help create the best possible circumstances in which healing can occur, not actually accomplish the healing itself. For example, suturing vein to vein and artery to artery in the almost microscopic way needed for a bypass makes this healing possible, but the capacity for healing itself is miraculously built into our very being.

6. Healing takes time and patience, You can expect some really encouraging progress followed by days and nights that seem endless and with fewer signs of healing. "Tribulation produces patience,"we're told in a familiar scripture text, a good thing for all of us.

7. The healing of mind and body go hand in hand. I expected to catch up on a lot of reading in my recovery, but for the first couple of weeks I found that my mind was unlike its usually motivated self, and that my brain, like my newly repaired heart, also needed some recovery time.

8. The world can get along quite well without my having to be in constant control of the kind of  scheduled life I've become used to.

9. Just as there are an amazing number of ways of helping people experience wellness and healing, I'm newly aware of just as many unbelievable ways in which people bent on evil are capable of creating destruction, suffering and misery on vulnerable, pain-prone human beings.

10. In summary, I've gained bucketsful of gratitude to God for all my blessings, and want to use every opportunity possible to preserve life and to promote healing wherever I can.