God Moments: The Heart

By the fourth week in the hospital, I was growing discouraged.  We needed a lift and we needed it in a physical change kind of way.  I was basically sitting in the hospital recovering from incisions, allowing them to drain and praying that the infection went away and the damaged areas were repaired.  It seemed like this could take forever.  There was no end in sight.

During my third surgery, the drain that looked infectious prior to the surgery was replaced.  It was draining from the duodenal bulb area that caused us so much grief already.  My surgeon said he scrubbed and washed and scrubbed that area really well so as to practically guarantee the infection would not return.

I like dates, parameters and measurable goals.  I asked him when we would know we were "in the clear" since this was now the second drain in the same place.  My surgeon said that usually by 5 days we can feel pretty confident that the infection is gone.  He told us that if that drain stayed clear we could start discussing sending me home. (Holy Hannah!  I could have leaped from bed and kissed him at that point.)  There were still some other things to work on over the next week, but nothing that wouldn't allow me to go home. You better believe we had a countdown going for those 5 days.  Every morning, Mom took a picture of the bulb to report that it was still red and bloody vs white and infectious.  This we celebrated every day. She sent it in a text to everyone in our family.  This might be gross for some, but for us, "Red" was health!  "Red" was healing!  "Red" meant I was close to home!  I didn't even think about what the alternative was.  We were focused on red.  We made it to Day 2, then Day 3,  and Day 4.  One doctor's opinion was even that we passed Day 3 meant it was pretty good.  But we still focused on Day 5.  

I woke up early on Day Five as I did every morning.  The nurses had been coming in all night.  New shift started at 7am, so the night nurse was hurrying up to finish her work on me.  It took me some time before it registered to me that it was Day 5.  I scrambled in my bed to find my drain....and this is what I saw:

Yet another promise to me that I was going to be OK.  There was never a day where there was anything remotely close to a heart in my bulb.  But on Day Five, there was my heart, my promise that I was going to be OK.  I quickly showed my mom, who took a picture and blasted it to the whole family.  We. Made. It.  And the heart sealed the deal.  And we both cried. :)

Another lesson I have learned thru this trial is that God is everywhere.  He is in everything.  But if you aren't looking for Him, then you will never see Him.

If I am trying to be poetic, I could take the lesson to be that Jesus died on the cross for me and thru his blood I am saved because He loves me so much.  So, the heart in the blood draws all new parallels.  

Once again, we received confirmation even thru small things (that were BIG to me!) that God had this!