2 Surgeries in 3 Days
I was told that I would have emergency surgery that night. The injury itself occurred around 6:00 that evening and I had the emergency surgery late that night. My wife and parents had been texting about my situation in my family’s group chat and my older brother was so overtaken with concern for me while he was at Lowes that he completely lost track of time and where he was and ended up staying in the hardware store for 2 hours both texting my parents, searching for doctors online and advising my parents about what to do. He had worked in my hospital network and knew all the doctors and was adamant that my parents and wife were to tell the doctors that under no circumstances would we allow them to amputate any part of my foot that night.
That really strengthened the resolve of my parents and
wife. I asked them to stay with me so
they could talk to the doctor for me because I didn’t trust myself in the state
that I was in. When the doctor came in
to talk about the surgery, he said that they would do their very best to
preserve as much as possible and that they wouldn’t take anything that
night. The plan was for him to do this
emergency surgery that night and then a couple days later for the foot and
ankle expert to do a second surgery for further correction.
As I was being wheeled to the surgery, I remember asking my
wife to text certain friends who I knew believed in the miraculous. As I got
closer to the destination I was brought into a room where they gave me the
anastatic. The lady who gave it to me
was very funny and talked about giving me a “Mickey”. I had never heard that before, so I jokingly
told her “does that mean I’m going to Disney Land?” She laughed and then I went to sleep. I only found out later when I told this to my
parents that “Mickey” was slang for drugs used to get people to do things that
you want them to do – think Bill Cosby – which admittedly was pretty comical
given the situation.
As anyone who can attest to going through a surgery, I woke
up seemingly right after and I was told that the surgery had gone well. Remembering who exactly told me this is fuzzy
(I think it was my parents and wife) but the surgery was successful. The surgeon gave credit to the doctor at the
ER who had cleaned my toes and he said that his surgery couldn’t have gone any
better than it did.
After that I was taken into a room that was a kind of
half-way room between the surgery and my long-term hospital room. It was around 4 or 5 in
the morning at that time, and I was really full of faith. The nurse came in and asked me how I was
doing, and I responded that I was “so happy that God was helping me and that He
was going to preserve my toes.” She
responded by telling me that she was a woman of prayer, and we spent the next
half hour or so talking about God and praying.
We sang worship songs together and even took Communion. It was wild, man. I cannot think of a more timely timeslot for
God to have placed a Spirit-filled nurse than the weekend grave-yard shift of
the post-op emergency room. During the
time that she was in my room I thought she was a human being but after I left,
I wondered about the possibility that she was an angel (Hebrews 13:2). Maybe it was the fact that I was on powerful painkillers but I remember telling people that I thought it was possible that she could have been an angel. It turned out that she was in fact a human
being because I saw her again during my hospital stay a couple of days later.
After she left the room, I began to text different people
about what was going on. I was wide
awake, had nothing else to do and I was coherent. I wasn’t sure if I would
be coherent later because of all the pain medicine I was sure that I would be
on, so I texted my workplace to tell them
what had happened. I also started text message chains with my family and my
church that become very encouraging avenues and outlets for my confessions of
faith. Below is what I sent early that
morning.
After this I was brought to the room where I would stay the next 4 days in the hospital. Needless to say it had been a very strange 16 hours but I was wide awake and in a good mood. And after going through the process of meeting the nurses and knowing what buttons to push if I needed something I found myself alone. I took that time to worship God. I worshipped Him simply because I love Him, and I remembered a sermon I had heard from Bill Johnson about how when you go through difficult times that you are presented with a unique opportunity to give God a deeply sacrificial offering of worship that moves His heart to a greater degree than when you praise Him when everything is going good.
And oh man that little hospital room was full of the
Presence of God. I played the below song by Jeremy Riddle about how “No one else can love You like I
love You Lord” and I got so pumped up that I was moving my arms like I was
dancing, and I was overcome with the peace and joy of God. I will talk more about this later but
all throughout my recovery the Presence of God was so near. I would worship God 3 to 4 times a day
because worship music would move me so powerfully during this time. I talked to my pastor about this later and he
asked me if my situation had brought me closer to God. I told him that being hurt and having a
prolonged recovery is a great way to get close to God – but I don’t recommend
it. I’d rather just fast and pray haha.
My pastor actually came to visit me later that day to pray
for me and to cheer me up. During the
time that I had alone I was able to reflect on things pertaining to the
accident. One thing that came to my mind
was a strange vision I had seen a week or so prior. For those who don’t know me I am very much
Charismatic and one of the great disciplines of my life is to record and
reflect on the various spiritual senses I receive either in prayer or randomly
throughout the day.
A week or so before the accident I had seen a vision of a
shark attack. I had prayed about it a
lot and had no idea what it meant – there was a piece of me that speculated
that there would be some kind of terrorist attack or something in the world,
but I wasn’t sure enough to tell anybody about it. I reflected that a shark
attack was similar to what I had gone through.
Which is that one moment everything was ok and then in a split-second I
was hurt like someone would be if they had been attacked by a shark or some
kind of animal with sharp teeth. I do
believe that this was God telling me in a strange way that He knew what would
happen to me and even though I didn’t understand it until afterwards I do take
consolation in knowing that God knew what was going to happen.
When my pastor and his wife came, I remembered that I had a
similar vision when praying with his wife.
That spring my pastor was on a mission trip and while he was there his
wife was at our church’s prayer meeting.
At the end of the meeting, we gathered in pairs to pray for each
other. While praying for her I saw a
vision of a sting ray stinging someone in the ocean and them falling in the
water. I asked her if that meant
anything to her and she said that she didn’t see how it meant anything. I prayed for God’s protection and blessing
over whatever it could mean and just shrugged my shoulders because I didn’t
know what it meant either.
During my pastor’s trip he was working to help prepare a
building for the ministry and he fell off from a very high ladder (I believe it
was at least 10 to 20 feet high). He
went to the emergency room in that country, and he was miraculously unhurt
apart from some glass cuts from the fall.
I was putting all this together and I asked my pastor’s wife
if the time I had prayed for her and saw the vision had been before he
fell. She said that it had and was taken
aback that the Lord had showed us what was going to happen to my pastor just days
before it happened. I told them about my
vision of the shark attack as well. When
my pastor responded that it was cool that God had shown me that I agreed but
also said “I much rather want the anointing to be healed.”
~
My first surgery was late Saturday night / early Sunday
morning and my second surgery with the ankle and foot surgeon happened on
Tuesday during the day. In between the
first and second surgery I had talked with my doctor – who my brother had said
was the best surgeon in our area for these types of situations – and prayed
about it and I decided that I was going to shift my faith to just focusing on
keeping my big toe. My doctor had told
me that the toe next to my big toe had been so badly damaged that the bone was
gone and that if I kept it that it would cause me more problems than it would
fix. He said the big toe was more
important for movement and that losing the pointer toe wouldn’t make that big
of a difference.
With that in mind I decided to allow them to amputate part
of my little pointer toe. My doctor told
me that the fate of my big toe was still up in the air and that it would depend
on how I recovered if I would be able to keep it but that we would try
everything we could to keep it. With that in mind my heart and my soul were
fixed on pursing God for the faith for Him to heal my toe. This was obviously difficult to do in the
midst of such uncertainty, but I knew that doing so would please His heart.
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