'Surgery was abandoned due to risk to patient's life' intoned the nurse addressing the duty consultant doing ward rounds a few days ago. I was still pretty groggy and in soaring pain (still am today) but at least I had got back to the main ward after my time in the Intensive Care Unit. What gagged me more than my circumstances was the growing realisation that I had undergone that dangerous and tricky procedure for nothing. Due to the amount of scar tissue found in my body, the surgeon worked on me for about an hour and then closed me up. Now I still have daily inescapable pancreatic pain, enough in itself to make me curl up into a foetal position and long for deliverance, and on top of that the pain of an operation, wounds, stitches and all.
So, what clever little piece of pithy prose shall I put into my blog today? That's right - none at all. I am thoroughly p****d off. Almost incoherent through weakness and absolutely clueless about what is going on in my life. Yet there is just a tiny pinprick of glow like a little firefly flickering stubbornly on at midnight in a vast dark empty African wilderness. I remember a bible passage that says, 'We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.'
That's it then. I won't try to understand it. I'll leave that to Him. Be content just to 'carry about in my body the death of Jesus' and leave the rest in His hands. Does anybody know a good song that will cheer me up? Answers on the back of a postage stamp please.
