Amazing Grace & Blooming Gardens

So back to the story . . . I'm in the hospital for the second time, hurting, nauseous and miserable.  To be honest, I was pretty much everything but scared.  It never occurred to me that the nausea was more than just that. I figured I'd get fixed up and be on my way home.  But they did a CT scan and the blood work came back.

The next day it was definitive: acute renal failure. 

I'll never forget hearing those words, but at the same time, the moment wasn't real.  A good looking young doctor stood at the foot of the bed and very carefully walked me through the events that led to the moment--the pain meds, the nausea, the stomach stuff, the blood pressure medicine. Then he said that my kidneys had essentially stopped working.  The chances of them coming back? He declined to say which I understand. He had a stethoscope, not a crystal ball.  The IV treatment stuff started big time. The pastor of our church and a good friend came and we prayed. I can't remember a single word, just that sense of abiding in God's presence, that certainty that that He knew all about this mess and that I was safe in a way that defied test results.

That night I had a cystoscopy plus stents put in by a doc who could have been an extra in MASH.  Seriously, he reminded me of Alan Alda. Turns out he's an old trauma surgeon. Compassion oozed from that man. When he looked at me and said he did this all the time and could do it in his sleep, I believed him.

So they knocked me out again, I had the procedure, and the waiting began to see if my kidneys would jumpstart. 

Still, no fear.  Just that sense of God is God.  If I can trust him with my eternal soul, surely I can trust him with my earthly body.  This doesn't mean I expected to be healed. It means I knew God would be with my family and me wherever the path led, even to a life on dialysis as remote as that seemed.  I had a dream that night about a tapestry being woven.  I was a little yellow flower. Friends and family were other types of plants and flowers, but the main thing about that image was that the tapestry was being woven by God one needle prick at a time, and that those flowers were all connected in an amazing garden of beauty.  

It's sounds a little pain-induced now, but that dream is embedded in my brain.  The oneness I felt with God and community--everyone from family to friends to church friends to nurses and docs--was beyond description.

We got word the next afternoon that my kidney function was back to 100% normal.  That's when it hit . . . I was on the mend.  As things turned out, there was one more ordeal . . . more on that later.