At last! After years of ignoring this life-changing surgery due to its complexity and mainly its cost, NHS England has published news that it is going to commission the same surgery that I had last year! Total Pancreatectomy with Islets Transplant is now to be made available at 4 regional centres around the country. They estimate that up to 75 patients a year will be treated and given the chance to live again after the ravages of this dreadful disease, one of the most painful known to man. The pain of chronic and recurring acute pancreatitis is described in the report as being extremely severe, requiring opiates and causing multiple hospital admissions, and of course, the inability to work and in many cases death. I cannot express fully how grateful I am for this answer to prayer on behalf of my fellow-sufferers around the country. And, indeed, thanks to my own independent health authority, for the fact that I was offered this a year ago when still in the trial stages.
There are many reasons to be grateful today. It's coming home! Not the team that England sent to Russia, but the football team of boys who were rescued from the deepest, darkest caves in Thailand! Hooray! God answers prayer! Imagine the joy and relief of those parents as they welcome their sons home again after their dreadful ordeal. What an amazing international rescue operation too! A real reminder of the depth of compassion that still beats in the human heart - a remnant of the divine pattern so deeply spoiled by sin - yet revealed so fully in Jesus.
For those of us fed up with Brexit and Trump there are many other matters for which we should be grateful and rejoice. There is a God in heaven and he may not support the England football team but he has acted to make hope and help available in the world in so many ways that should make our hearts sing. 👍☝😀
