back explosion

so it's been over a year since i last blogged...unacceptable, i know. i suppose at some point in the wedding planning process and then the months following the wedding, blogging just fell by the wayside. since i have never been an extremely faithful blogger i cannot promise that this time around will be much different, but i have been feeling an itch to write, so here goes.

as many people are now aware, back in december i ruptured a disc in my back. i had been experiencing back pain for over a month, and i was diagnosed with a bulging disc, but on december 13 as i was getting out of bed the disc actually "exploded" (a.k.a. ruptured). i fell back into bed unable to move at all without intense pain. i called my best friend who has a key to the house, and she came and eventually convinced me that we should call an ambulance. so the ambulance came and picked me up. what i thought might be several hours in the e.r. turned into nearly a week in the hospital. there were several times throughout my stay where i was told "if you can get up, you can leave." each time i tried to muster all of my will power and pain tolerance, but i could not get up. (really, who was i kidding - i couldn't even make it to the bathroom without benjamin halfway carrying me there...i'm not sure how i thought i was gonna get up and walk out).

after several days of trying numerous drugs and other things, the doctor on the floor suggested that it was time to consider surgery. at that point, i was just thinking "do whatever you want to me, just make the pain stop." because i continued to be in so much pain, and because i was so ready for the doctors to try anything they thought would help, i didn't really consider the seriousness of the surgery at the time. we were referred by friend to a very gifted neurosurgeon, and when he said he had done this specific surgery numerous times, i wasn't really worried at all. it wasn't until a week or so after the surgery that it really hit me how bad off i was, how intricate the surgery was, and what a miracle it is that i made it through back surgery and was healed.

it really hit me when i was reading in john 5 about the paralytic man beside the pool at bethesda. a man was there who had been an invalid for 38 years. he was hoping to be healed by the pool's waters, but had no one to help him into the pool when the waters were stirred. he couldn't even move a few inches to get into the pool. i realized that i could easily have been that man. had it been another time and had i lived in another place, i could have been lying, waiting, hurting for years and years. i could not even put any weight on my left side, and i'm sure many of the limited movements i did have were because i was on so many pain killers the most intense pains were at least somewhat diminished. Jesus miraculously healed the man at bethesda. but was the outcome of my surgery any less miraculous? from what i can understand, the neurosurgeon cut about a one-inch incision in my lower back. he cut some small pieces out of the bone in my spine in order to be able to get to the ruptured disc. he cleaned out all of ruptured disc material, which was what was pushing into my nerve column and causing the intense pain and numbness in my back, leg, and foot. after cleaning out the ruptured material he somehow closed up the disc, and then closed the incision in my back. several hours after the surgery i was walking around the hospital floor, able to put weight on my left leg without much pain. i mean, seriously...how is this not a miracle? the fact that God has given people the ability to understand the nerves in my back and to make an invalid walk in a few hours is baffling. were it not for the miracle of modern medicine and a gifted surgeon, i might be figuratively hanging out by the pool at bethesda right now, hoping and praying and begging for relief from my pain and my virtual paralysis.

sometimes it is so easy to miss the miraculous in a day and age and culture where miracles have become commonplace. just because my surgery was "routine" in the world of spinal neurosurgery does not mean that a miracle does not occur every time a procedure like mine is successful. God has given some the gift of healing - and whether or not my neurosurgeon recognized it, God used him to perform a miracle in my life on december 17. in a way i feel like the man at bethesda, or the man who was lowered through the roof to Jesus...all i know is that i couldn't walk, and then a miracle happened in an operating room, and now i can walk again.

praise GOD from whom ALL blessings [and miracles] flow!