Before I start this blog let me first say that there was SO MUCH that happened and if I went to too much detail I could write 7 blogs about this past week. For my sanity’s sake, I am gonna try to write it in one. I apologize if it is long, but it’s worth it!
We launched from Atlanta on Saturday at 11:15am eastern time. We landed in Los Angeles around 1:30 pacific time. We had a 9-hour lay over in LA, which pretty much consisted of trying to make 54 people not get in the way of anyone. Slightly challenging, but I think we did okay. We were expected to have a 15-hour flight to China, then another 9-hour layover and on to a 2-hour flight to the Philippines.
HOWEVER, at around hour 8 of our Los Angeles layover I began experiencing some lower abdominal pain and my first reaction was “Oh Lord, please don’t let this be a kidney stone.” The pain was manageable, but a fear started to form in my mind that I was going to get a kidney stone on our 15-hour flight to China. So I took some ibuprofen and some percoset that I had left over from the kidney stone I had in October. Then we left and I was feeling okay again until about an hour into the flight. Then the pain came back and it was more painful than before. Then the nausea hit. I quickly began to realize that i was starting probably the worst day of my life. I began vomiting about every 15-20 minutes and the pain was probably the worst I have ever felt (though whenever you are in the midst of extreme pain it always feels like the worst ever). I couldn’t stay seated so I just ended up pacing around the bathroom, and the poor well-meaning China Southern flight attendants had no clue how to help. They would hand me water, I would drink a bit and then throw up and they’d say “you feel better now?” To which my response would be to continue vomiting and cry “nooooo!!!” They ended up moving me up to first class where they had these awesome bed-chairs. It was helpful. But nothing could keep the pain and vomiting away. My squad leaders and team leader took hour-long rotations of watching over me, praying for me and encouraging me through the pain. I began to get dehydrated quickly and delirium set in at some point. I kept hearing and seeing things that weren’t there because I had been awake for so long and in so much pain for so long. Someone turned on the flight tracker on the tv and it seemed like it wasn’t moving at all. Suffice it to say, it was the worst 15 hours of my life. And it didn’t end there.
Once we finally landed in China, two of my squad leaders and I headed to the clinic in the airport. The doctor in the clinic believed that I had APPENDICITIS. I didn’t believe her. I was sure that it was a kidney stone, but she told us we needed to go to the hospital. She wrote the address on a piece of paper. I went with it, sure that once I got to the hospital they would see the condition that I was in and give me an IV drip of saline, pain meds and nausea meds. I was sorely mistaken.
The hospital was nothing like I was imagining. We walked in and the floors were soaked because it was raining. The nurses and patients all seemed to be in a hurry and super disorganized. The English that the first nurse spoke was broken and it was super challenging to communicate. I went down one hallway and saw the “infusion” room and it reminded me of pop-up hospitals after a natural disaster. I was terrified and silently praying that it was just a kidney stone and that I could just get meds and be on my way to the Philippines. However, the doctor (who later became our friend) examined me and thought it was appendicitis as well. He sent me up to get an ultrasound. During the ultrasound a crowd began to form in front of my screen as they marveled at my horseshoe-shaped kidneys. One of the technicians literally jumped up and down in joy when she saw it. They gave me the pictures and sent me back to the doctor where he informed me that I DID have appendicitis. He told me that I would need to have surgery that day. My two squad leaders and I prayed and decided it would be best to get the surgery in the Philippines that way i could recuperate with my team around.
So we took the 30 minute drive back to the airport. Just before going through customs our squad mentor called and advised me to have the operation done in China because of the dangers of flying. I told her what we had decided and she said okay and hung up. Just after we went through immigration she called back and said that adventures in missions strongly advised that I not fly due to the possibility of my appendix rupturing. At that point I was so exhausted and in so much pain and so thirsty that I just laid down on the floor and cried. I was going to have to go back to the scary hospital where they didn’t speak English well and it was wet and seemed unclean and had squatty potties. It took us about two hours to get out of the airport and back to the hospital. When we got there we walked straight back to the doctor, Tatsing, who had diagnosed me and said that I decided to have the surgery in China.
At 2 pm the pre-operation process began after having arrived in China at 5 am. So at that point I had been in extreme pain and vomiting for 24 hours. The delirium began to worsen around then as well. They hooked me up to an IV for fluids and antibiotics and nausea medications that didn’t seem to work. They gave me a shot in the butt for pain that definitely didn’t do anything. And I was given a bed in a hallway where I remained for several hours. The pain never subsided and I just had to keep doing deep breathing to try to get through it. I began seeing and hearing weird things because I was so dehydrated and exhausted. I was “translating” the conversations around me and seeing and hearing my squad leaders as other people. I was conscious of how wrong that was and that scared me even more.
I kept crying out for pain medications and nausea medications and they never gave me anything that actually worked. I spent what felt like forever in that hallway in unimaginable pain with nothing to relieve it.
Eventually I was moved to a different hallway and I met my surgeon, whose English was fairly good. I was comforted by that. I was scheduled for surgery at 9 pm. Around 7 pm a nurse began prepping me for surgery, which involved shaving some private parts of my body in the middle of a hallway with a screen that didn’t really block anyone’s view. I lost it at this point. I was crying and sorta screaming and telling her “no” even though she couldn’t understand me. I pulled my clothes up and wouldn’t let her proceed and I finally got moved to a “room.” It was really a supply closet. But I allowed her to finish the pre op preparation. I eventually was wheeled to some room for surgery, still in constant pain. Once in the surgery room I was introduced to the anesthesiologist who proceeded to tell me that I was too fat to be intubated asleep so I would have to be intubated awake. Which immediately sent me into a frenzy because in his broken English I thought he was telling me that I would have to be awake for the surgery. I kept asking to speak to the surgeon and they said I couldn’t. I eventually was so delirious and so exhausted and so desperate for relief of my pain that I just gave up. And fell asleep. I woke to them intubating me. It was probably the scariest thing that I have ever had to go through. I felt like I was drowning and there was nothing I could to do stop it. My throat closed up in rejection to the intubation tube. They had to try 2 more times before I was able to relax my throat enough for it to work. And I fell asleep immediately after that. I woke to the anesthesiologist calling my name.
I was moved back to my supply closet. I finally was free of the abdominal pain and nausea and was able to sleep. And sleep I did! For the next 3 or 4 days I slept probably 75% of each day, waking only to eat and use the restroom and read for a bit. I was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday after 2 days. I was not cleared by the doctor to fly again until Saturday. I had a lot of time to think.
I thought a lot about why I would get appendicitis the first day of the race and what I was supposed to learn from it. There were times that I wanted to go home, because I thought if this type of thing could happen on day 1, what was in store for me? Is it worth it? I kept thinking maybe I am not cut out for the race. I thought about how bad stuff always happens to me and how I can’t expect good things from the Lord. I knew good things had happened throughout the whole ordeal but I couldn’t give God the credit because I kept thinking that the situation was just so bad that the good was not even a drop in the bucket. My squad leaders kept saying how God kept providing throughout the week and I kept getting annoyed by them. Honestly, it was only the Lord that changed my attitude around and allowed me to see His hand.
One of my squad leaders who was with me told me “all good things come from the Lord.” And I said back to her “really?! Is that in scripture?” She told me it was, but she wasn’t sure where. So I searched for it.
James 1:17 says “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”
I clung to this verse and began to truly see God’s hand throughout the week. I had not been willing to give Him credit partly because I didn’t want to be wrong and just assume something was Him that wasn’t Him. But after studying this verse I let myself give God the credit that was due to Him.
God provided me with a bed on the flight to china and with 4 people who took shifts caring for me and an entire squad of people praying for me.
The Lord provided me with stewardesses who brought me hot water bottles to help with the pain on the flight.
He provided an intake doctor who spoke English (his name is Tatsing), and he ended up taking very good care of us. He brought the squad leaders winter coats when it was super cold on our first night. He brought me soup once I was finally able to eat. He helped my squad leaders find the US embassy to deal with visa stuff. He took us out for meals several times. He was able to check my incisions after I was discharged from the hospital and let us know that we could fly on Saturday. Tatsing was definitely God’s provision for us in a city where barely anyone spoke English and everything was written in Chinese characters.
God provided me with an English speaking surgeon and a couple of nurses that spoke some English.
He allowed me to be delirious enough to not be too traumatized by being intubated awake. (Seriously guys, this is a huge blessing.)
If I had chosen to fly to the Philippines, my appendix could have ruptured due to the air pressure. The Lord protected me from that.
Not only did he provide and protect me during the crazy, scary week, He also loved me enough to use the situation to teach me and bring me closer to Him.
One thing I learned was that if I don’t SEE God working then I don’t BELIEVE He is in it. He showed me this when I realized that I didn’t see my surgeon in the operating room before or after the surgery. The next day when the surgeon checked on me, I said to him “you weren’t in the surgery, why weren’t you there.” And he said “I was there. I left because I had to eat dinner.” (The surgery probably ended at 11pm, and he was just eating dinner.) I began to realize I view God the same way as the surgeon. “God I don’t see you in this, why aren’t you there?” And he has used the James 1:17 verse to transform my heart in this area!!
There were so many more ways that the Lord provided for and protected me during that week, but this blog is already super long!! You get the gist, right?!
He is a good, good Father and He gives good things to His children!!
