During the week before Christmas, I began to hassle with swollen and unbearably itchy eyelids. I just wanted to scratch them all the time. However, I had a vague memory of, twenty years ago, giving up my contact lenses after having something called blepharitis, so I simply continued with a variety of home remedies over Christmas. This week, realising my eyes felt even more "puffy" and my vision was slightly blurred, I finally went to the doctor who told me that I had both blepharitis and conjunctivitis. He prescribed an antibiotic, as well as antibiotic eye drops, and told me I have to go back next week for a hydrocortisone cream if I don't begin to see an improvement within 7 - 8 days. And so, for the past few days, I've been putting drops into my eyes several times a day.
This week I began to notice something else that was rather strange: every day, when we were driving to the hospital, I noticed that I had a bad taste in my mouth. I realised that the strange chemical taste at the back of my throat was coming from the drops that I had just put into my eyes. I had been aware that our ears, nose and throat are interconnected, but - not being much of an anatomy student - I hadn't realised that what I put in my eyes can also end up in my mouth. Sure enough, the leaflet in the box explains that the tear duct which drains tears to your nose can also drain some fluid from your eyes to your throat.
Today is the last day of the year. In Scotland, we call it "Hogmanay" and, for me personally, it's always a time when I look back to evaluate the year that is ending, and look forward in anticipation of what God has for me in the year that lies ahead. There have been a few times in recent years that I stood at the end of an old year without a clear vision or knowledge of what the new year held in store. On Hogmanay 2007, I had just left Africa and moved back to Europe, and I still didn't know which country I'd be living in for the coming years. On Hogmanay 2008, I knew that Spain was to be my new home, but I was asking God some questions about ministry priorities and commitments for the next few years. On Hogmanay 2009, we had just "lost" the house we'd planned to rent the following year, and I knew I'd be returning to Spain to start house hunting again. On Hogmanay 2010, it was very nice to move into a new year without wondering where I'd be living at the end of it! But I'd been having increasing pain from arthritis and was in a season of seeing Spanish doctors regularly for x-rays and other tests to determine what could perhaps be done to offset the discomfort of the joint degeneration...
I think it's probably true for all of us that we begin every year with one or two questions about what the future might hold for us. Usually there are some things that are certain and predictable, but there are other things, both good and bad, that we simply cannot foresee with our human eyes and understanding. What security there is in knowing that we can draw on God's wisdom and can rest in the knowledge that He goes before us, each step of the way. How important it is to take time to listen to Him and find out His vision, goals and priorities for our lives, so that we can move into the future, knowing that we are prepared even for the unprepared and unpredictable. As I discovered this week, having blurry vision can leave you with a bad taste in your mouth!
So here we are at the end of 2011. When the year began, we never imagined that we would spend most of the last two months of it in hospital wards. And as those months went by, the doctors told us again and again that 2011 would be my Dad's last year here on earth. But now we stand on the cusp of another new year. As we begin this year, we can't foresee what it holds for us. We can't even predict how long Dad will be in hospital or when he'll really start eating and walking for himself again. As I return to Spain next week, I do know some things about what lies ahead and what ministry projects I'll be involved in... but there are also some question marks and some areas where I'm not totally sure what to expect. That's why I find security in the words of an old song that I heard when I was a teenager. It says: We don't know what the future holds, but we know Who holds the future.
Happy New Year to you and all that you love at this time.
Well, after our expressing our concern yesterday about the possibility that Dad's medication was contributing to his pain and discomfort, the nurse, the doctor, the dietician and the pharmacist got together for a pow wow this morning and decided to discontinue not only one, but four of the pills he was on. They also decided to adjust the rate of his nasogastric feed so that a smaller amount per hour is going into his stomach. These measures seem to have done the trick and Dad was pain free for most of the day. He was a much brighter and chattier man today than he's been over the past few days of abdominal pain and nausea.
Dad was proud to announce to us that he had eaten some porridge this morning and had stood on his own two feet today for the first time in nine weeks. Here's one of his nurses showing us the stand-aid hoist that's they use to help patients begin to stand again for the first time.
Well, there continues to be a little bit of "experimenting" as far as finding the source of Dad's pain is concerned. He had a good night's sleep and a pain free morning, but then told us that he had pain again this afternoon, after eating some lunch. As the "lunch" had consisted of four spoonfuls of soup, his nurse told us that she would be really surprised if that was what was causing the pain.
She told us he's being given a drug called omeprazole, that is supposed to prevent stomach acidity.
Graham (my brother) also had omeprazole last week, when taking anti-inflammatories for his knee, and he told us that he'd had a sore stomach all week - though he didn't know if it was from the anti-inflammatories or from the omeprazole. I decided to check the official leaflet that you always get in a box of tablets - just to see if there might be lactose in the pill. I found that there was an anti-allergy warning on the box, saying that the pills do contain lactose, and when I read the patient information leaflet, I found that "stomach pain, nausea and vomiting" were listed as common side effects of that drug. (Seems a bit strange to me that a pill designed to prevent stomach pain can actually end up causing stomach pain.)
The leaflet not only warned that omeprazole may be unsuitable for people with suspected lactose intolerance, it also said that it could have adverse effects if used at the same time as a blood thinning drug (Dad's on an anti-coagulant), digoxin (a heart drug that Dad's been on for arrhythmia), sedatives (Dad's being given midazolam as well as morphine) or certain antibiotics (including one that he was taking last week for the pneumonia!) Anyway, I mentioned the omeprazole to his nurse, and she agreed that it's worth trying anything at the moment. Dad complains of feeling nauseous whenever he takes pills, and perhaps the pharmacist can substitute a different tummy pill tomorrow, so that we're trying everything possible to identify the reason for the pain.
This evening Dad was feeling better again; the pain had subsided and he'd managed to sleep a little before we went back in to see him again. He feels so much better and is much more positive when he's not having to cope with pain... so we're seeking and praying for an answer to what could be causing this.
Well, Dad reported that he was feeling much better today and hadn't had so much pain as over the past few days. It may be too soon to say whether it's the decision to avoid milk that is making the difference, but the results are pretty promising so far. Dad was pain free for most of the day, except for some discomfort in the evening after eating a little dinner.
The nurse told us that the surgeons continue to be pleased with the progress of his wound (even though it will still take a long time to heal because of not having any stitches in it) and it's possible that Dad will soon be moved to a different ward - a rehabilitation ward for people who are no longer dangerously ill and whose recovery is likely to be a slower process rather than of short duration.
This morning in my daily Bible reading, I was studying the Old Testament book of Amos. There's a verse (Amos chapter 3 verse 7) which says that God reveals plans and secret things to his prophets. In fact, we see this often in the Old Testament: that God gives insight and understanding to his servants (Moses, Abraham, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc) about things that are happening or going to happen. A favourite verse of mine - Psalm 25 verse 14 - says that the Lord shares his "secrets" with people who love and respect him. It wasn't just something for the Old Testament days, but is something that we can still experience today. The New Testament uses a variety of different words to describe this experience of hearing from God: a word of knowledge, a word of wisdom, a word of "prophecy." But these terms can sound sort of religious, and sometimes they obscure the simplicity of just hearing God speak to us in the quietness of our hearts.
Some years ago, when I was moving back to Europe from Africa, a very meaningful scripture for me was Deuteronomy 29 verse 29. It says that, "The secret things belong to the Lord, but the revealed things belong to us and our children, so that we can obey God's instructions." It's a fact of life that there are many things we simply do not know or understand.... but the things we do know and understand are the things we need to hold on to and obey. I may not know the source of my Dad's ongoing tummy pain and nausea; I may not understand why he's spending so many weeks in hospital and struggling with so many setbacks.... but I do know that God is good and that he promises us His presence and His strength in difficult situations.
Just as I was writing these thoughts in my journal, back came another thought that had flitted through my mind over the past couple of days. The thought was "lactose intolerance." It had first come to mind as I watched Dad struggling with stomach cramps and vomiting on Christmas Day. I had even spoken to his nurse yesterday and asked whether critical illness could be a trigger for lactose intolerance. She said she wasn't aware that this could be the case, and that Dad has been drinking milk for the past two months - since starting to take things orally again. As I thought about it again this morning, I realised that it's been three or four weeks now that Dad has been eating hardly anything and only drinking milk... and over these weeks he has increasingly complained about tummy pain. Could this thought about lactose intolerance perhaps be an impression from God, an insight into something that doctors hadn't considered as the source of Dad's discomfort?
Well, not being a healthcare expert, I had to resort to the 21st century's source of information for laypeople: I googled lactose intolerance to see if I could find out further information about it. The first thing I discovered was a list of four or five symptoms that pretty much described what Dad has experienced over the past weeks. And right there, at the top of the list of possible causes of lactose intolerance in adults was: bowel surgery. Two or three different websites said that bowel surgery or intestinal infection (Dad's had both of them since his surgery nine weeks ago) are common triggers for lactose intolerance in adults. This seemed like too much of a coincidence. Could God be drawing our attention to something relatively simple that just happened to have eluded doctors amidst the many other complications that Dad's been facing over the past nine weeks?
I was of course hesitant to give the impression that I was trying to tell the doctors their job, but I felt that I needed to be obedient to an impression that seemed as if it could be from the Lord, so I phoned the hospital and shared my concern with Dad's nurse. I asked her to check with the consultants whether they felt it might be worth doing a blood test or a hydrogen breath test to check whether lactose might be the culprit behind the pain he's been experiencing. "That's interesting," said the nurse, "Because he told us he doesn't have any pain today, and he actually had a glass of cold water instead of a glass of milk this morning."
When we arrived at the hospital this afternoon, the nurse told us that the consultant said he thought it was unlikely that milk could be the cause of the problem and he didn't think it was worth doing a test for lactose intolerance. But the nurse was pleased to report to us that Dad was doing well today and had had a pain free morning. So you can imagine our surprise when we went into Dad's room and he told us that he was struggling with the tummy pain again. I looked at his chart to see what he had eaten at lunch time and, sure enough, he had drunk a glass of milk just about an hour before we arrived. Despite the fact that the doctor had been unconvinced, we shared our thought with Dad and suggested that he avoid drinking milk for a few days, just to see if it makes any difference to the discomfort he's been experiencing. When his dietician came in just then, she agreed that it wouldn't do any harm to "experiment" for a few days to see if it makes a difference. She took a marker pen and wrote on his whiteboard: "No milk allowed for the next 2 or 3 days." So I guess now we just need to wait and see whether this might be the secret to the solution as far as Dad's pain is concerned.
Well, Christmas Day was not one of my Dad's better days in the hospital, and it was sad to see him struggling with some stomach pain and vomiting when we went in to visit him. The hospital had flexible visiting times for Christmas, and so we were able to stay with Dad for several hours, but he spent much of the time sleeping after nurses gave him medication to counteract pain and nausea. The first photo shows Kasey helping him open the present that he was given by the hospital Santa, and the other is just a family photo taken in the early evening.
Dad was still struggling with sickness and tummy pain today, which is rather discouraging for him after several days of feeling better last week. No "reason" for the pain has been offered by medical staff yet, so we're not really sure what's going on there. We so wish he could have some more days without pain and discomfort.
When we got home from the hospital last night, we watched one of those so-called "heartwarming" Christmas films that are on all the movie channels at this time of year. This one was about a couple who had lost their teenage son in a car accident during a previous Christmas season, and the "happy ending" was when they decided to adopt a little girl who had been orphaned just before the upcoming Christmas. At one point in the film, the husband, who was a pilot, said he'd been taught in flying school that, "You can't change the wind or the weather, but you can choose the altitude of your plane." It made me think that life is like that: we have very little control over our circumstances, especially the difficult things like illness, pain or family tragedy; the only thing that we do have control over is our own attitude and response to the trials. For me, as a Christian, that means making a daily choice to draw on God's strength and trust him amidst the ups and downs of our lives and circumstances.
Today is the 25th, which means it's exactly two calendar months since my Dad had his first surgery on 25th October. Things went so well that day; we could never have foreseen all the complications and heartache that lay ahead. There were many times that doctors told us Dad wouldn't live to see this Christmas. Back around mid November, when ICU doctors were being particularly pessimistic, I asked God what I should expect and what I should prepare myself for this Christmas. My daily Bible reading that day happened to find me in Isaiah chapter 9, a passage that is often read in church services at Christmas time. Verse 2 says, "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light... the light has dawned for those who were living in the shadow of death." Of course, it's speaking about the fact that Jesus our Saviour was born at Christmas, bringing light and life for those who used to live far from God. But for us as a family, after several weeks of doctors telling us Dad was close to death, I really felt as if we'd been walking in darkness and "in the shadow of death." Even though we knew so little of what the future might hold, I had a sense that God was telling me our Christmas would bring the dawning of light and not of death.
So here we are on Christmas Day, and we'll be spending much of it in the hospital. Dad is still very weak, but over the past days there has been a sense of things being stable, with no further setbacks and complications. Sadly, he's not really eating yet, so there will be no turkey dinner for him this year. But it is nonetheless amazing that he has made it this far and is still with us on Christmas day.
We'll be having some Christmas dinner at home today, and then heading to the hospital to spend the rest of the day with Dad. At the moment, as we're putting the turkey in the oven and beginning to prepare the vegetables, the TV is on in the background. I had to smile when I saw that it was a film about a sheepdog puppy: the dog in the movie looks very much like my Kylie that I had to leave in Cape Town. That reminded me of many summer Christmases over the years, and what a surprise it was when the very next thing on the television was a programme about animal rescue in Cape Town. So many of the places shown were very familiar to me. It's strange to sit in wintery Scotland and see pictures of sunny South Africa on TV.
Christmas is often a time for memories - hopefully mainly for remembering the fact that God sent His Son to earth so that we could be His children and His friends - but often also a time for remembering Christmases past, with their memories of old friends and places. I wonder what our memories of Christmas 2011 will mean for us in years to come.
