So here was a post i made almost exactly 1 year ago...Time really flies. The little girl is actually doing pretty well now although it's been at least 8 months since I have last seen her. I wanted to post this before I forgot about it.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
I Thessalonians 5:16-18
"Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."
A few months ago, I had a little girl as a patient of mine while on the hematology service at LeBonheur whose situation caused this verse to haunt me. She came in with ITP (immune thrombcytopenic purpura), basically a disease where your own body attacks your platelets and kills them. Your platelets are very important for stopping any bleeding that may occur in your body, and if they get to be less than 40k then you are at a very increased risk of bleeding. Her plateletes were 0. She was a beautiful little girl, 8 years old, who loved cinderella, fresh peaches, those nasty humongous pickles, and was doing very well in school. She was a true giver as well. One day early in her hospital stay, her family (complete with at least 3 aunts, 10 cousins, a grandmother and mom who never left her side) brought her a lot of goodies because she was in the hospital. I came in her room that afternoon and was bugging her that she hadn't shared any of her rice crispy treats with me. Well, this little girl then offered me at least 3 different kinds and was mad at me when I didn't take any of them. I told her that I would stop by the next day and share one with her in her room so as not to take her food. For a week we tried everything medically known to get this sweet little girl's platelets to come back, but each time, our treatment failed. In this disease, you don't give platelets either because her body will just destroy them and she would be right back where she started. Well, the next morning when I came to the hospital, my patient was not in her room, her bed was gone, and I was confused. I pulled her chart and learned that she had developed a bleed into her head, the most devastating and rare complication of ITP, that happens in less than 0.01% of all kids with the disease. She was in intensive care, waiting for emergency surgery.
So, a long story made short, she got the surgery, her platelets recovered spontaneously (as they do in ITP), and she ended up staying for about 3 more weeks, but she is neurologically devastated. She is paralyzed on her right side (walking unassisted is not likely), may never speak again, and is looking at a long, hard road to recovery. For a few days there, though, nobody knew if she would survive, and it was during this time that I remembered the above verse in Thessalonians. It stared with the "pray continually" part, and I think I finally began to grasp a little of what this verse meant. Every idle second during those days and weeks surrounding my patient's complication, my mind and my spirit would turn towards her and her family. I had no choice but to pray; it was literally the only thing I could do. When my audible and mental prayers were done, by soul grieved for her and for her family. In quiet moments, I would hold back tears thinking of her, of how I never was able to make it back to share our rice crispy treat, of how she would not be able to twirl around in her cinderella dress any longer, of how her walk down the isle on her wedding day would not be how she invisioned it. It was almost overwhelming to go down that pathway. After going back to look at that verse, the particular sentence starts with "Be joyful always..." For good reason, that seemed impossible at times. Her family, though, lived out these verses and the inherent difficulty between them in a way that would have been impossible for me if my child were in the same situation. During her stay in the ICU, her family would write down bible verses on little yellow post-it notes and hang them on the wall of her room in the shape of a cross. They had somebody from their church praying for her day and night, and when their spirits would get down, they would claim the truths on those post-it notes. Every day when we made rounds and went to see her, her mom would encourage US, her doctors. She would remind me that "God is in control," that "God will get the glory when she walks again," or that "God has greater plans for her..." In my life, it has always been easy to be joyful and give God thanks because he has poured blessings on me and my family that I cannot even begin to count...but seeing this family live an example of this verse in light of these horrifying circumstances showed me that these commands are cyclical. It may start with the situation where all we can do is pray...our souls groan within us and the holy spirit inside of us intercedes, and then we can give thanks to God for these circumstances, for this chance to grow in faith, to witness His miracles, to see the Love of Jesus demonstrated with an encouaging word, a hand held, a tear shed...and a little girl who survived, who can still smile, can still eat her peaches and pickles, and who still can be loved. Finally, we can arrive to the point where we can be thankful and somehow this thankfulness can over time be transformed into Joy. I will continue to pray for her, to think often of her family, and to give thanks to God for their unearthly example of faith and what praying continually can mean to me.
