His Peace in the Hospital

Each year the school gets all the teachers away for an overnight to talk about who we are and where we are going. What a great time to build the most important resources of our school, our people. One of our families from the school runs a small "resort" in the mountains an hour from Chiang Rai, and these cabins are a great setting for retreat and retooling. The afternoon of the retreat brought with it free time and many of us, including Julie, joined in on a waterball game in the pool with splashing and friendly dunking. Following the game Julie noticed a little fatigue. Of course this seemed natural following all the sporting and rough play.

Later that evening as she slept she was awakened by pains in her belly. The pains intensified but seemed to be possible flu or stomach issues. My concern grew as she was hurting and unable to sleep or resolve the issue. The next day she skipped all the activities and remained in bed suffering from “the flu.” That next evening after returning home, she felt warm so we took her temperature, a rare event. I can’t recall that I have ever taken Julie’s temp. She asked me to look on the internet at stomach pains combined with fever. Playing internet doctor is never good, so a call to Julie’s brother, Jackson, a doctor in Waco, seemed the wise route. That phone call sent us packing and off to the local hospital for a check up.

The pain continued and worsened as the night came on. Here we sat in the emergency room with a doctor prodding and telling us it might be a good idea to check in. A few papers were filed and moments later we found ourselves overnighting at Overbrook Hospital. Previous to this experience, our general joking as we pass by this and other hospitals sounds something like, “Don’t wanna go there.” And yet present circumstances demanded that “there” we were.

The night became challenging rather quickly. After talking to the doctor and then processing the doctor’s evaluation through phone calls with my brother in law, it was becoming quite obvious something was really wrong. More pain for Julie. The blood work returned marking out most of the simple problems. Then, more pain, followed by more discussions with Jackson on my mobile.

Here is where it gets really complicated. Walking back and forth from the nurses station with requests for more visits from doctors and surgeons that were not available to me at 2 a.m., somewhere in that hallway I recognized that our American reality of having a CAT scan and a surgeon ready and available at any moment of the night was not a present reality for our situation. With her symptoms, the health care we were used to would have already had her under the knife pulling out her appendix. The health care we had was saying let’s put her on antibiotics and move on this in the morning. We were assured, “We’ll get a CAT scan as soon as possible,” in other words tomorrow morning.

More push from me, more “Let’s do it now.” More surprised looks saying, how are we gonna do this now when it is the middle of the night? Finally, God reminds me that it really is hard to kick against the goads. Jesus made it clear in that room at 2 a.m. that he meant what he said, “My peace I leave with you and I do not give as the world gives.” My response, “So Jesus, you are saying we are gonna have to sit here, this woman in pain from something that could at any point kill her, and we are to trust you?” Kinda a very unAmerican reality, not having any cards to play. A mandatory "Be still." While we don’t want to go back there, during those hours of resting in "Be still," Jesus was close.

My friend Timothy from Zimbabwe taught me a song many years ago called “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.” It recalls that Jesus is the one who keeps us. I sang that song a lot that night. The next six hours would be greater pain and more concerns. His peace would keep us.

On Sunday Nov. 1 at one p.m. they surgically removed Julie’s highly infected appendix. She is alive and recovering and we, by grace, once again recognize that our fragile lives are in His hands.

Here is one more just for interest:

When Sunday morning rolled around, they took us by ambulance to another hospital in town to get the CAT scan because the doctors who could read the CAT scan at our hospital were in Bangkok or having surgery. Grrr. Cost for ambulance ride…$6. Hmm, that might be an interesting piece to add to U.S. healthcare cost discussions.