Take your healing

The Lord revealed something interesting to me this morning while I was doing my daily Bible reading.

When they [Jesus and his disciples] had crossed over [the Sea of Galilee], they landed at Gennesaret and anchored there. As soon as they got out of the boat, people recognized Jesus. They ran throughout that whole region and carried the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went – into villages, towns or countryside – they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched him were healed. -- Mark 6:53-56

What jumped out at me was the last phrase: “... and all who touched him were healed.”

He didn’t touch them, they touched him.

He didn’t touch them, they touched him.

Jesus went to “the marketplaces” – public places where everyone went every day. No one had to look very hard to seek him out. He made himself available where anyone – in villages, towns and countryside – could find him.

Those who needed healing – and doesn’t everyone need healing of one kind or another? – came to him. And those who were too weak to get themselves there were “placed” there by other people who cared about them.

We often hear complaints that Jesus didn’t intervene in this or that situation, and often he doesn’t, for his own reasons that we are incapable of understanding.

We expect him to come to us, when what is needed is for us to come to him.

But I wonder how many times we miss blessings – how many times we don’t get healed – simply because we fail to reach out to him. We expect him to come to us, when what is needed is for us to come to him.

He isn’t hard to find. He makes himself available in all situations in all places at all times, out in the open. It’s up to us to go to him, to reach out to him and to take the healing. He carries the healing with him wherever he goes, but it takes action on our part, not his, for us to receive it.

All is well

In case you missed it ...

My doctors have given me a clean bill of health. Praise God! Thank you, Lord!

I already gave the news in the "James at 5:16" post below, but I realize now that the headline is a little vague and I buried the lede. Mea culpa. There's never a copy editor around when you need one.

The paint can results are in now as well, and everything came out fine there, too, so to speak.

(By the way, I'd love to see some comments on these posts. You don't have to sign in or join up to leave a comment. Just use the "Name/URL" option under Comments and write in any name you like. I'd like it best if I knew who you were, though. And while you're at it, feel free to click on any of the links you see on the site. They're risk-free, I promise.)

James at 5:16

"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous person is powerful and effective." -- James 5:16

My hematologist told me today that my bone marrow biopsy and related blood work showed no sign of cancer, no sign of myelodysplasia, no sign of developing leukemia or lymphoma. They also did a chromosomal study to see if there are any genetic precursors of cancer or other diseases, and there are none.

I got nothin'.

Give God praise for his exceeding grace and mercy, and while you're at it give yourself a pat on the back for sending up some powerful and effective prayer. I thank you from the bottom of my heart and the depths of my spirit.

For a person my age, the makeup of the bone marrow should be roughly 50 percent marrow cells of various types and 50 percent fat. Mine is more like 30-70, but Dr. Jay says that's nothing to be concerned about. The low lymphocyte numbers we've been seeing could have been caused by exposure to some unknown toxin sometime in my past, or I might simply be made that way, she said. Either way, it doesn't seem to be a problem.

The vitamin D deficiency noted in my previous post could indeed be the culprit in my weight loss, but it is not related to the white cells; it's just a coincidence that it happened at the same time, she said. Dr. Jay at first suggested I add a vitamin D supplement to my diet, but backed off that idea when she learned I have a history of kidney stones. She said she would get back to me with a plan for addressing that problem.

Just eat a healthy diet and exercise, she said. See you in three months.

Again, I thank each of you for your love and prayers and support during this worrisome time. I can now exhale and get on with my life, more determined than ever to redeem the time.

What's D problem?

My primary care doctor's office left me a message yesterday to inform me that my most recent blood test showed a vitamin D deficiency.

This could explain my weight loss; one of my sisters lost a frightening amount of weight several years ago, and it turned out to be a vitamin D issue. She's fine now, thank God.

Whether this could account for my missing white cells remains to be seen Monday, when I return to the hematologist for the results of my bone-marrow excavation.

Canned

Another possible explanation for my weight loss, albeit remote, is celiac disease, a disorder of the small intestine.

At my brother-in-law's behest, I asked my family doctor about it the other day when I was in for a regular checkup. Although dubious, she went ahead and ordered (yet another) blood test, as well as something called a fecal fat test. The blood could be done in the office, but for the other thing I had to go to a lab and get a take-home kit.

The lab worker started to bring the kit out to me, but when she saw there were other people in the waiting room she had me come with her behind a closed door. I figured the kit would be like one of those smear tests you do to screen for colon cancer. Instead, what I got is what you see here:





I laughed. "A paint can??" I said. "Basically ... yes," said the woman, trying to keep a straight face but not really succeeding. She admonished me to follow the instructions carefully, make sure nothing gets on the outside of the container and bring the Pail o' Poop back to the lab when it's ready.

"Boy, I hope I don't get confused and accidentally paint my dining room with the contents of that can," I said.

"Yeah," she said. "That's a brown you don't want."

So off I went with my bilge bucket to my lovely wife, who was waiting for me in the truck. "Why are you laughing?" she demanded. "I gotta poop into a paint can!" said I. We sat there and laughed hysterically for several minutes while she read the instructions aloud:

PATIENT PREPARATION FOR COLLECTING STOOL FOR FECAL FAT

Adult patients should be on a standard diet containing 50-150g of fat per day for at least 3 days before test is started and during the 72-hour collection. ... The patient should not have had mineral oil as a laxative prior to specimen collection. Refrigerate specimen during collection and store at 2-8 degrees C.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMITTING STOOL FOR FECAL FAT

1. Can must contain fecal matter only (i.e., NO urine, toilet paper, diapers, plastic bags, cups, etc.). IF OBJECTS OTHER THAN FECAL MATTER ARE PLACED IN CONTAINER, SAMPLE WILL BE REJECTED.

2. Seal can by hammering lid down securely.

3. Place white plastic ARMLOK ring around can lid and press down with thumbs to "snap" seal.
CANS CANNOT BE SUBMITTED WITHOUT WHITE PLASTIC ARMLOK RING.

4. Do not punch holes in lid.

5. Indicate below collection time:
__ 72 hour collection
__ 48 hour collection
__ 24 hour collection
__ other __ hour collection

6. DO NOT FILL CAN OVER 2/3 FULL. Use additional cans, if necessary, and indicate this information here: CAN #__ of ___ cans collected. (ex.: can #2 of 3 cans)

7. Place can in leak-proof bag containing absorbent sheet and seal bag.











Brings a whole new meaning to "going to the can."

Well, that sucked

On Wednesday I had my bone-marrow biopsy. Do not try this at home. When I showed up at Dr. Jaye's office, the nurse, Pamela, who took my blood asked me if I had someone to drive me home. I did not, as no one had told us what a mess I would be at the conclusion of the procedure. "I don't know if you'll need a sedative or not," Pamela said. "I've never had a bone marrow, so I don't know how painful it is." Oh well, no worries, said I. I'll just tough it out and it will be fine. Ha.

I was told to lie prone on a table and informed that

I "have a good butt for bone marrow."

Why thank you! You really know how to make a guy feel special.

A woman named Maria came in and made small talk for a while before shooting my lower back and left gluteus full of numbing agent. "I'm putting lidocaine in here just like your dentist uses," she told me. "My dentist never works down there," I told her.

The procedure progressed pretty well, with just a couple of painful jolts like a Taser being applied to my pelvis. See, the problem with lidocaine is that the practitioner can't see where it's working and where it isn't, so she just has to start poking and hope for the best. Eventually everything was comfortably numb and Maria inserted the big needle (reportedly the size of a ten-penny nail, which I never saw -- intentionally on their part, I'm sure). She had to puncture the top of the pelvis bone and go into its spongy marrow. "This is going to be a very unusual feeling," she warned me before beginning the next phase, wherein she wiggled the needle around for a while to dislodge some marrow so she could extract it. "'Unusual,'" I said. "Good word. I must admit that is an 'unusual' feeling for me." Maria, a rather tall woman, was standing on a stool next to the table and leaning over me for added leverage, literally reaming me a new hole. I could feel the pressure all the way through to the front.

Just as Maria was finishing up that part and the procedure as a whole, I started to get dizzy and told her so. She leaned over to look at my face and saw that I was turning bright red. She told someone to go get a cold, wet towel and put it on my neck while Maria pulled out the needle and applied a bandage to the wound.

The towel didn't help. I felt close to passing out, so they rolled me over and put another towel over my whole head. My blood pressure clocked in at 148 over 110, which is sky-high for Mr. Mellow with the 90 over 64 baseline. They gave me a sip of apple juice, which I choked on.
Then it got really interesting when my abdominal and throat muscles started convulsing. A nurse named Connie tried to call my lovely wife (MLW) but had trouble figuring out how to use the speed-dial function on my cell, and I couldn't help much because my vocal cords were seizing. When she did figure it out, she couldn't get an answer because it was the one day MLW chose to sleep in.

Maria had the nurses give me IV fluids and left me alone in the room as the convulsions continued. I was pretty scared at this point and was praying, "O God, I don't want to die the way my father did.

"I don't mind coming home to you, but please, Lord, not like this."

Then I just started thanking him over and over again and telling him how much I love him. A peace came over me and the convulsions eased, thanks to the Holy Spirit and saline solution.
My phone rang on the stand next to my table, and I answered it. It was MLW. She thought I had been calling earlier just to say I was done, but realized from my strained voice that something was wrong. I told her I needed her to find a way to get to the hospital and drive me home. She caught our next-door neighbor Marg just as she was leaving for work. By the time MLW got to the hospital, I had been moved to the chemo room and was pretty much back to normal. (Insert wisecrack here.)

We ran into Pamela, the blood-drawing nurse, on the way out. "By the way," I told her, "the next time you have a patient come in for a bone marrow, give the sedative, and make sure they have a ride home. It hurts -- a lot -- and bad things happen."

Blood simple

During 2007 my white blood-cell count kept falling inexplicably. I was sent to a highly regarded hematologist, who didn't want to jump to any conclusions but cautiously told me there was a possibility of some pretty serious conditions, including lymphoma.

Dr. Jaye (that's her first initial; her last name is Srinivashia, but she's universally known as Dr. Jaye and is even paged that way at the hospital) chose a wait-and-see approach. She suggested adding a vitamin B-6 supplement to my diet because it plays a role in bone marrow development. She also suggested an iron supplement to boost my production of platelets, which were also marginally low.

My lovely and I had already changed our diet to eliminate almost all processed foods and junk food, as well as red meat. Dr. Jaye recommended eating red meat once a week or so, to get vitamin B-1, whcih simply isn't available from any other source. So we relented on the red meat but have stuck pretty well to the rest of the diet.

After my October visit, Dr. Jaye told me to come back in three months. That would give the diet and lifestyle changes time to have an effect on the bone marrow and blood counts. It would also allow her to observe any changes in the two spots on my liver that appeared on a CT scan.

Fast-forward three months to January 28, 2008.

(You can read my last previous post if it helps fill the gap.) I'm feeling physically well and emotionally confident.

They send in the warm-up act first, a very nice Nigerian PA (physician's assistant) who shows me the report on my most recent CT: The liver spots have become almost invisible and are harmless -- probably cysts.

(The report notes that "the stomach is completely empty," which isn't surprising since I was in the midst of a four-day total fast for spiritual purposes. Our church, Free Chapel, engages in a 21-day fast every January; it starts with a three-day total fast, then becomes a Daniel fast consisting of fruits and vegetables only. Our pastor, Jentezen Franklin, has just released a new book on the spiritual discipline of fasting.)

The PA also notes that my platelet count has gone from 108 in October to 109 now. That's a bit below normal range (140-440), but it's stable and therefore nothing to get worked up about, she says.

So now I'm feeling really confident that all this nonsense is about over with.

Then Dr. Jaye comes in.

My overall white-cell count came in at a low, low 2.9 per deciliter; the normal range is 4.8 to 10.8. That's not good.

During my very first visit with Dr. Jaye, she mentioned doing a bone-marrow biopsy, but didn't want to do it because it's invasive and painful. However, now she was stumped and out of options, so she said the biopsy was needed to find an answer.

The specific condition she's looking to identify or rule out is myelodysplasia, which she described as underdeveloped bone marrow. Untreated, it eventually can lead to leukemia, lymphoma or multiple myeloma, all of which are forms of cancer.

Research I later did on the Internet indicated myelodysplasia can be treated with medication, and if that doesn't work, a bone-marrow transplant is a treatment option. The preferred donor pool for transplants is siblings, since they are the only candidates with whom the patient shares both parents, which increases the odds of a tissue match. Should it come to that (and let's pray it doesn't), I am blessed with an unusually large pool of potential donors -- six sisters and four brothers, several of whom have already expressed their willingness to become donors. Thanks, you guys.

The adventure that was 2007

The year 2007 started with a bang. That was the sound of my abdominal wall bursting open with a hernia the size of my hand. I had just had one repaired on my left side in August of 2006, but this time I opted for the larger, roomier model on the right side. Never settle.

Meanwhile, I was struggling a bit in the new job under the thumb of a certain supervisor. His constant badgering and efforts at public humiliation inspired nervousness in me that led to even more mistakes, and I actually had a panic attack at work one January night in anticipation of screwing up an important task. I truly feared I wasn't going to make it in this job, but a couple of key friends back home were praying for me and helped me get through. They convinced me that the Lord didn't bring me this far to drop me now.

Anyway, the body shop patched me up in mid-February, but

I soon noticed that I was rapidly losing weight -- 14 pounds in six weeks.

The surgeon said people don't typically lose weight with hernia surgery, so I should see my primary care physician. So I had a complete physical and blood work, which indicated my white-cell count was a little low. The doc had it redone to make sure it wasn't a glitch, and it came out even lower, so she sent me to a gastroenterologist, Dr. Harris (I had also complained of getting full after a couple of bites), and a hematologist, Dr. Jaye.

Over the next few months I had an abdominal CT scan, a colonoscopy, an esophagogastroduodenoscopy (aka upper endoscopy or EGD), a pelvic X-ray, a capsule endoscopy (for which I swallowed a tiny camera and walked around all day with electronic equipment harnessed to my torso) and a gastric emptying study (for which I ate radioactive oatmeal and lay on a table while a sensor determined how quickly it moved through my system).

All of which led to exactly nothing in the way of diagnosis. Granted, I did learn that all those systems are in fine working order. But the question of my low white-cell count remained unanswered.

My first meeting with Dr. Jaye went well until she used the word "lymphoma." That got my attention, let me tell you.

After a difficult and disappointing search, we found and joined an excellent church with a terrific preacher. Free Chapel, led by the Rev. Jentezen ("Jensen") Franklin, is 45 miles away in Gainesville, Georgia, but it makes for a nice Sunday morning drive. The Spirit is present there and the teaching is Rock-solid. The music rocks, too.

During the summer, I read the book "What Would Jesus Eat" by Don Colbert. As a result, my lovely wife and I practically eliminated processed food from our diet, started living on whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables and cut way back on the alcohol. We have stuck with that regimen, and guess what? Food tastes better and we feel better.

However, she has not lost much weight and I have not gained back much, and my white-cell count continues to drop and puzzle everyone. More on that in another post.

Just after my return to work in March after my surgery, God gave me the best birthday present ever: I learned that the evil boss, who is from another country known for bad teeth, was effectively being fired as the company had declined to renew his work visa. He would have to leave the country in late fall. Hallelujah! Thank you, Jesus!

Thou, O Lord, art a shield for me; my Glory, you lift my head!

In August I got away from him even sooner than expected when I grabbed an opportunity to move to the morning shift after 16 years of working nights. He managed to avoid deportation and got his work visa renewed after all, but he's been removed from his supervisory position and our paths almost never cross anymore.

The year ended well as my lovely and I took 10 days around Thanksgiving to visit friends and family in Ohio, Illinois and Michigan. Then my 6-year-old goddaughter and her family moved in December from Florida to Marietta, Georgia, a scant 25 miles from our home. They went to church with us on the Sunday before Christmas and then came to our house, where we baked a birthday cake for Jesus.

All in all, I can't believe how blessed I am. Thank you, Lord.