My Continuing Story…
At 5 years old, I began having headaches. By May of that year headaches became more severe and were accompanied by severe nausea and vomiting. After a week or two of not getting any better, more tests were ordered by the doctor, where they discovered a malignant brain tumor.
I still remember the day of my first surgery on June 1st, 1984. The nurses brought me some orange juice in a cup, which had some kind of medicine in it to make me go to sleep. The last two things I can remember were being covered in a warm blanket and my mom saying “I love you.” When I woke up, I was back in a room with my head all bandaged. It was difficult to sleep because nurses kept flashing a light in my eyes. After around two weeks I was able to go home. The doctors said to be careful and not to bump my head. As careful as my mom tried to make everything, my head got bumped at least ten times that first day. I didn’t have a lot of energy, which made playing with my brothers hard. I also had to stay out of the sun, because I was getting radiation treatments every day. That left out swimming. Sleeping seemed to be the one thing I could manage so I did a lot of that. Little did I know that this was just the beginning.
By the time I started the first grade I was doing fairly well. I still didn’t have any hair so I wore a ball cap most of the time, and I didn’t have as much stamina as the other kids, but at least I was back in school. The worst thing was I would get about every virus or cold that went around and I had a hard time getting over them. On Christmas Eve, 1985, I became sick again and had to be admitted to the hospital that night. The doctors couldn’t find out what was wrong, even though I was sick enough to be in the ICU. I improved enough that they sent me home after a week. In 1986, doctors determined I had radiation necrosis. At this time I was given three months to live. Here I am 28+ years later.
In recent years, my health has been affected by the radiation treatments. I have had 3 brain hemorrhages with one requiring surgery. I started having uncontrollable seizures that resulted in my having the right temporal lobe of my brain removed in August 2011. More recently, I lost control of the left side of body and was in the hospital for almost three weeks. While my condition eventually improved, doctors still have no idea what caused it. While I can honestly say that I am tired of dealing with these sorts of issues, I can also honestly say something that is whole lot more important:
We have to go through the yuckiness of living in this world to allow God to turn it into something beautiful–To reflect God’s glory! When we realize that we are broken or even embrace the fact that we are broken people, God can use us. When we are at our weakest, we are made strong through Jesus. These aren’t words on a page for me. They reflect why I am still here and why I continue to share the love of God with anyone who will listen.
“Earth is crammed with Heaven and every bush aflame with God. But only those who see take off their shoes…” -Elizabeth Barrett Browning
And the road goes on and on…
Jacob, thanks for sharing what your life is really all about when you unspeakably inhabit, as the Apostle Paul described, what it’s like to be a “new creature” now in Christ Jesus. Nothing else can ever compare with this because “the old has passed away, and, behold all things (now) have become new” (2 Cor. 5: 16-21).