This is me leaving hospital on Friday. Apparently the wheel chair was compulsory, though I'd offered to walk and help push.
I'm not actually home yet. Staying with my dad, because we have a confirmed COVID case in the family and it's good for me not to be close by. This morning another daughter confirmed positive, so it doesn't look like I'll be back home for at least a week. In this tag-team COVID-catching time, this process could extend.
In the meantime, want to join me at church? I'm preaching tomorrow on 1 Thessalonians 2. It will be the best sermon you have heard on 1 Thessalonians 2 for many days, and it is an insight into the power of the gospel of God to transform lives in the face of adversity and with great glory to him. You can join us live, or later, by clicking through: https://www.stbarneys.org.au/this-sunday-live-stream/
Also a better version of this song, I am waiting to hear. I know that my Redeemer lives:
This is me, exercising by walking around the hospital ward with the other COVID-isolated inmates. No not really, but I shall be released tomorrow--not to go home, because I will be staying with my dad, given that our family is in COVID isolation with one daughter having caught COVID for the second time.
Art of the Day: Van Gogh, Prisoners Exercising (after Doré), February 1890. Oil on canvas, 80 x 64 cm. Pushkin Museum, Moscow.
All appears to be well, no sign of infection and doctors happy. I'll be preaching at church this Sunday, God willing, on 1 Thessalonians 2. But unlikely to see the rest of the family in person until Tuesday next week.
The next chemo cycle is 2-3 weeks away, yet to be determined and somewhat dependent on how well I recover from the current surgery. Like the men in Van Gogh's prison yard, just keep moving.
Meanwhile, sing with me and Bob. "I shall be released"
or listen to one of my favourite versions, Bob Dylan, The Band, and friends.
Not too much to report. Jabs and pills. Waiting on results, maybe I'll go home tomorrow. In the meantime, whether you are great or small, Jesus loves you!
I work at CMS (Church Missionary Society) as an editor, and the International Director there is Peter Rodgers. I've been so thankful that during this time of illness I've just been able to keep on working from home or even from hospital, as the case may be. CMS as employers have been incredibly fair and supportive in finding ways for this to continue.
I mention this as background to something completely different, which is how Jesus responded to news of his friend Lazarus' imminent death. Here is just a little of the story, from John 11, that sets up the scene:
After saying these things, he said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”
It's well worth reading the whole chapter, in which Jesus is implicitly rebuked for his slowness in coming to his friend's side. Surely he could have prevented the experience of death that he now witnesses firsthand? But he hasn't come in time (or so it seems), therefore he weeps.
The afore-mentioned Peter Rodgers wrote a brief piece about how Jesus responds to his friend Lazarus' death. It is a response that by clear implication shows us something of how we, too, can face the reality of the deaths of those around, or even our own.
In his short article Peter asks this key question: Why did Jesus weep?
Weeping is
normal at the death of a loved one. In some cultures, weeping is done almost in
private, and expressions of grief are muted. In other cultures, a public
display of weeping is important, even to the extent of employing professional
mourners.
In John 11, when people hear the unexpected news of Lazarus’ death there are
natural expressions of grief.
“When Jesus saw her (Mary)
weeping, and the Jews who
had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and
troubled.“Where have you laid him?” he
asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied.Jesus wept.
The expressions of grief from Mary and Martha and the others with them are
expected.
But why does Jesus weep?
Jesus already knew that Lazarus had died and what he would do for the sake of
God’s glory (verses 4,14,15). So, if Jesus knew he would raise Lazarus
from the tomb, why does he weep?
There are some lessons we can learn.
Jesus is not indifferent to suffering. He loved Lazarus (verse 5). We see here
the great heart of Jesus: the Son of God, God himself—weeping, sobbing—at
the death of his friend, and the grief it has caused his other friends. This is
the normal and right response to death – even for Christians. For whilst we do
not grieve like the rest of the world, we still grieve. Here we see that
weeping is a right response to death. And the Son of God has so entirely
entered into humanity that this includes entering the depths of sorrow. Jesus
wept.
But Jesus does not weep out of despair as we might. In verses 25-26 he has
already declared these magnificent words.
“I am the
resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even
though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never
die.”
Unlike us, Jesus is not powerless. Jesus proves the truth of these words by
calling Lazarus out of the tomb!
It may seem odd to us that someone who has the power to raise people from the
dead should weep. Odd that Jesus can be all powerful and yet burst into tears.
This is the mystery of the person of Jesus – who is man and God. We don’t need
to spiritualise away his tears and anger. We need to accept he is God, but
still fully a man. He trembles in anger, weeps in sorrow and then raises the
dead with a shout.
Eight chapters later the Jews will be shouting for Jesus’ death.
Of course, Lazarus grew old and died again. His resurrection, as amazing as it
was, is just a shadow, a glimpse of what happened just over a week later when
Jesus was crucified and his dead and mutilated body laid in a tomb. And three
days later he rose from the dead, once forever, never to die again. Jesus is
literally “the
resurrection and the life”. These were not empty words spoken just
to comfort people in their grief. These are life giving words spoken by the
only person in all history to have defeated death and now live forever.
At a basic level, Jesus' tears should encourage us to weep with those who weep.
We should allow grieving people to feel right anger at death and suffering. In
fact, death and suffering should make us indignant wherever we see it. We need
to become better carers of those who suffer. Christians who know that we have a
God who has wept at death should never be indifferent to death.
But more so, although in the face of death we are powerless, we can point
grieving people to Jesus, who not only grieves with them, but is himself the
resurrection and the life.
The Christian response to death and dying is not stoic acceptance. Nor is it a triumphalistic lack of awareness, nor even a resigned despair. It is exactly and precisely the response Jesus gave: to weep over its horror, and to trust to the power of God to completely reverse and upend and defeat its power over us.
As I'm writing this blog post on a Sunday, how about you join me in singing this hymn? Or scroll down to the video and let the Welsh do it for you.
1. Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah, Pilgrim through this barren land. I am weak, but Thou art mighty; Hold me with Thy powerful hand. Bread of heaven, Feed me now and evermore; Bread of heaven, Feed me now and evermore.
2. Open now the crystal fountain, Whence the healing waters flow; Let the fire and cloudy pillar Lead me all my journey through. Strong Deliverer, Be Thou still my Strength and Shield. Strong Deliverer, Be Thou still my Strength and Shield.
3. When I tread the verge of Jordan, Bid my anxious fears subside; Death of death, and hell's destruction, Land me safe on Canaan's side. Songs of praises, I will ever give to Thee; Songs of praises, I will ever give to Thee.
Yes, visiting here in hospital has been highly restricted but possible. Only one visitor per day. And of course phone calls.
I’m not entirely unhappy about the visitor restrictions. The medical people here are terrific but the environment itself is incredibly noisy.
That doesn’t bother me, as sleeping anywhere, anytime is one gift that I feel God has given me to offer the church—or indeed any context that I find myself placed in.
But to add troops of visitors into the mix? Heavens to Betsy! My own visitors I could handle. When everyone in the public ward gets visitors, that is a lot of people. And so many people here seem to appreciate shouting and being shouted at, including amongst the hospital staff. I know this because in the absence of many visitors, people ring their relatives in hospital and shout at them. Not angry shouting. Just shouting. This I am not understanding. It does however seem to bring some measure of comfort and cheer to those being shouted at.
Perhaps in these COVID restricted times it could be a ministry some churches could become involved in: offering to ring up sick people in hospital and shouting at them.
“I was hungry and you fed me. Naked and you clothed me. In hospital and you rang me up and shouted at me.”
Think about it. In these COVID times, this idea has legs.
[This is from my 15 February Facebook post, transferred here and updated for sake of completeness]
15 February. Slightly rushed health update. Intense pain in the middle of last night related to constipation and internal plumbing. Ambulance trip to RNS Public to find answers. Pain well controlled and about to see surgical team to discuss options in light of CT Scan results. To me, and this is pure speculation, the options are not likely to concern whether or not I get ice cream for dessert tonight, but more about whether some kind of surgery is about to happen.
Who knows? Well, God does and that is good enough for me. If you are the sort of person who prays, you know what to do!
Thanks for those who comment and pray in various ways. Please know that I love reading what you have to say but responses are likely to be hit and miss. Generally I will put the latest onto my blog but just occasionally, like today, FB is probably the best way to go.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Update #1 on basis of CT scans, emergency surgery would normally follow at this point. Couple more consultations required first.
Update #2. Bowel cancer has perforated. Emergency surgery for perforated bowel about to happen.
Update #3 surgery has happened. I don’t know what I was expecting but I feel surprisingly well. Colostomy, catheter, button for self-regulated pain relief, beautiful family and many friends, and above all, a hot line to the one who made all things in Christ, in whom all things hold together. God hears and answers prayer.
Update #4 surgical team dropped in just now, 7.30 am on 16 February. They were happy with progress.
Thanks to those praying and sending messages. They mean a great deal. And I’ve been reminded of the Heidelberg catechism of 1563. Check out question 1 below:
Q. What is your only comfort
in life and in death?
A. That I am not my own,1
but belong—
body and soul,
in life and in death—2
to my faithful Saviour, Jesus Christ.3
He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood,4
and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.5
He also watches over me in such a way6
that not a hair can fall from my head
without the will of my Father in heaven;7
in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.8
Because I belong to him,
Christ, by his Holy Spirit,
assures me of eternal life9
and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready
from now on to live for him.10
[The Heidelberg Catechism, 1563. Q and A 1]
1 1 Cor. 6:19-20
2 Rom. 14:7-9
3 1 Cor. 3:23; Titus 2:14
4 1 Pet. 1:18-19; 1 John 1:7-9; 2:2
5 John 8:34-36; Heb. 2:14-15; 1 John 3:1-11
6 John 6:39-40; 10:27-30; 2 Thess. 3:3; 1 Pet. 1:5
Here is the red sheep, here is the blue sheep. Here is the bath sheep, and here is the bed sheep. But where is the green sheep?
Oh wait. Different book, different story. I meant to talk about pills not sheep.
The first cycle of chemotherapy hit pretty hard, as friends in the know predicted. Lots of sleeping, some nausea, a return to hospital after a temperature spike, and a brain that functioned in grooves or not very well. If I could hunt down a thought I could follow it through but sometimes lacked the energy to do a task I'd set for myself that day, then ran out of puff and did a lot more sleeping.
The visit to hospital was good (I'm out now) and took pressure off the family, and I want to find ways to keep helping them as they help me. Sometimes that will mean occasional visits to stay at my dad, sometimes other things. Fiona has been wonderful and continues to be so.
What I'm currently finding entertaining and informative is the number of pills that I've been loaded up with for the treatment of various side-effects (tiredness, nausea, constipation, not-constipation, possible infection, inflammation, pain) on top of the full range of possible chemotherapy options and injections of unnamed substances.
It is very confusing, especially initially, because some of the treatments and subsequent treatments for side-effects have opposite effects and, in any case, require you to have at least a sense of what's going on.
Example, the steroids (to damp down inflammation) also can produce wakefulness and fast-paced thoughts, which can occasionally overcome the tiredness induced by chemotherapy. That's fine, and sometimes useful if you've been sleeping all day but suddenly get a burst of brain activity that allows you to work away for a few hours at night. The ideas flow freely, even manically and if it is for work-related writing that is good at the stage where you're drafting ideas. Then some sleep and as the steroid effect wears off, the brain slows down to a level where it is able to edit the incomprehensible brilliance you've produced into a form that a reasonable third party could begin to understand.
If you can understand that cancelling or opposing set of pill-effects as it relates to the thought processes, then you can use your imagination to extend the metaphor to other and lower bodily functions. The red pill is going to help you with side-effect X brought on by the painkillers. But before you had side effect X, you were suffering from symptom Y, which is actually the opposite of side effect X, so that's good right? Well sort of, except you weren't expecting side effect X, so you did what was advised and took the blue pill to help with symptom Y.
So you're sitting there, having been discharged from hospital, with the red pill and the blue pill. Each is potentially useful, even necessary. But they cancel each other out and you're not quite sure which one to take.
My solution just at the moment is to dump all the pills in one bag, and pick the one that I personally prefer at any given point, allowing for actual instructions and warnings about not taking too much. A lot of the time the actual instructions say something like 'take as needed and not if not'. So even though my approach sounds random, it fits within the best current medical advice available to me. Maybe it's a bit like with those night-and-day cold and flu tablets, where I figure that if you've got a very runny (non-COVID) nose, you just take one of each and the hype-up effects of one will be cancelled by the hype-down effects of the other.
This has turned into quite a long post, relative to the others. Looks like the brain-hyping steroid I took a few hours ago is doing its thing. Hyping leads to typing. Please respond in the comments therefore if you think this post needs a bit of subdued editing or at least the addition of subheadings. I find that if enough people comment, the advice cancels itself out and just like the pills, I can pick and choose out of what's there. So have at it!
"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee." (Isaiah 26:3, KJV)
Today, more antibiotics and more blood tests. If everything's clear, then back home from hospital.
Meanwhile here's Orlando Gibbon's version of Psalm 47, O clap your hands (with no clapping. As great as the British choral tradition is, they weren't going to go that far).
O clap your hands together, all ye people, O sing unto God with a voice
of melody.
For the Lord is high, and to be feared, he is the great King of all the earth.
He shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our feet.
He shall choose out an heritage for us, ev'n the worship of Jacob, whom
he loved.
God is gone up with a merry noise, and the Lord with the sound of the trumpet.
O sing praises, sing praises unto our God, O sing praises, sing praises unto
the Lord our King.
For God is the King of all the earth, sing ye praises with understanding.
God reigneth over the heathen, God sitteth upon his holy seat.
For God, which is highly exalted, doth defend the earth, as it were with
a shield.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
Amen
Words from Psalm 47
Update: I’m home, with another little bag of pills. Today’s featured drug is Endone. I like this one!
A brain foggy day in which I had every intention of getting some work projects done, but haven’t found the focus.
Then Fiona came home with a new thermometer and my temperature is 38.5 degrees C.
Written doctor’s instructions say anything above 38 is cause for concern, so call the hospital oncologist straight away. Done that, waiting for call back.
I decided to keep the most important medications, as opposed to the ones I use just for fun, in a most important medication place. It’s taken about 24 hours to remember where that location was, but I found it now. Maybe I should stay safe by putting them all together in the same plastic bag and pulling out the one that best fits the side-effect of the day.
Today’s featured drug of the day: Apo-metoclopramide.
Update: off to RNSH emergency. Blood count and likely antibiotics. Admitted for one night.
Wednesday Update: no infection detected, keeping me in hospital one more night plus giving a precautionary five day course of antibiotics.
Various friends who know warned me that the next few days would be fairly full-on, given the amount of chemo they’ve hit me with. They were right! Just a lot of sleep.
When peace like a river, attendeth my way,When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well, with my soul.
Refrain It is well, (it is well), With my soul, (with my soul) It is well, it is well, with my soul.
Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, Let this blest assurance control, That Christ has regarded my helpless estate, And hath shed His own blood for my soul.
My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! My sin, not in part but the whole, Is nailed to his cross, and I bear it no more, Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
[For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live: If Jordan above me shall roll, No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life, Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul.]
[But Lord, 'tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait, The sky, not the grave, is our goal; Oh, trump of the angel! Oh, voice of the Lord! Blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul.]
And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight, The clouds be rolled back as a scroll; The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend, Even so, it is well with my soul!
My goodness my blog-fu is rusty. What does everyone think of this new look? Do I look fat in this? Do those planty things in the top right look like Coronavirus to anyone? Is that in poor taste if it does, or is it kind of topical?
Don't hold back, faithful readers. If this design looks sick in any way, I want to be the first to know.
Oh and so as not to depart from the main current theme of this blog, here is a cartoon in which Sylvester accidentally self-medicates himself with some experimental chemotherapy.
Portacath works like a dream. Chemo works like a scheme. By which I mean, it's started going in even as I type and we'll just have to see what happens next.
So far no discernible side-effects, except for an increase in hovering medical personnel. One member of the treatment team came in and gave me a bunch of helpful suggestions and a showbag including a booklet called Chemotherapy with Ramsay Cancer Care. I asked her if she'd read Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning but she hadn't, so I guess we exchanged reading recommendations.
Victor Frankl was a Viennese psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. He wanted to know why, of those who weren't executed, some otherwise relatively healthy people died whilst a number who you might have assumed were in much worse condition lived. His book is his answer to his queston. Click on that previous link to see the blurb.
It is a bit weird being in a hospital with no visitors and I'm glad it's only until Friday. At least I can chat to the family on the phone any time. Thanks for those who are making contact; I'm usually not answering calls but plenty of time for text-based communication just at the moment. Please know that I read everything even if I'm not able to respond, this blog still seems to be the best way to give up-to-date information for those who want it. Most importantly you may occasionally find jokes.
Speaking of which, my current favourite comedian Norm McDonald (who died of bowel cancer late last year), may well have been a believer in the Lord Jesus. Here are a couple of serious interactions on the subject.
2.45 pm update
Oh! After just half an hour into the third lot of chemo drugs I am getting the warned-of side effects of pins and needles in my fingers. Not painful, but just a hint of what else might be going on. You can actually develop neuropathy over time, so this is one of the many things the doctors are going to need to monitor carefully. It doesn't seem like it would be great for piano playing or typing. But you never know. If Alkan can compose music for one-handed pianists, some clever composer can probably figure out music for those who can't use their fingers. Is that right?
Oncologist SC visited, thought I was doing well but also warned that they were hitting me with the highest level of medication possible because they really want to stop progress quickly, therefore to expect lots more in the way of nausea etc, especially about day five or six after commencement of the cycle.
