Unavoidable Appointment
Introduction:
I’m Pete. God loves you!
The topic today: The unavoidable appointment
How It Went:
Starting at Home:
She had been mostly inactive, but still losing weight. The weight loss seemed a good thing. She was overweight. But then she got thin. Eventually we were all concerned because she looked like “skin-and-bones”. She resented our concern, and our saying that. But, she had been refusing to go to the doctor for a long time. She began having trouble keeping food down, so became weaker and weaker. She began having trouble just walking to the bathroom. Still, she refused her yearly doctor checkups. Prayer.
She began holding on to everything around her just to move about the house. Diarrhea set in, and she was leaving messes, but still would not go to the doctor. Then, weaker and weaker, she began falling. When she fell three times in a row, we called the ambulance. She refused to get in. They made her sign a waiver. The next day her falling started all over again and, with much persuasion, we finally convinced her we could not keep picking her up, and she was taken into an ambulance. There was no way around it. It was an unavoidable appointment. Prayer.
At the Local Hospital:
They drove her to the local hospital and wheeled her into ER. I met up with her in her ER room they had set up for her. They hooked her up to things, took samples, did scans, all to try to find out what was causing the emergency. It was the only way to know. Many hours went by as they narrowed down what might be the cause of her severe illness. It was now approaching the middle of the night. Finally they came and told us that there appeared to be some type of mass at the bottom of her esophagus, top of stomach. The diagnoses now required a specialist and specialized equipment elsewhere. Prayer.
The Big City Hospital:
At the big city hospital they hooked her up again, ran tests again, and did new tests and scans. They put her to sleep. Specialists ran equipment down her throat to take pictures and took samples inside her. There were many days of testing and waiting for results. Finally, they had enough results to tell me it almost certainly was cancer. It was cancer that was blocking most of her swallowing and had widely spread in the bottom of her throat, stomach, and possibly as far as her brain. We waited for results that would pinpoint the type of cancer and help toward determining how to treat it. Ignoring the problem would only make things worse. Facing it was unavoidable. More prayer.
The Hard Decision:
After more days of waiting for the details, an experienced doctor specialist came to discuss with me treatment options. They could try surgery, but the cancer was too widespread, and after trying to cut it all out, she would be mutilated, suffer even more, and, in her weakened state, would likely die in the process. They normally use surgery on otherwise strong patients.
They could try chemo. But chemo kills all the body. They just hope that it will kill the aggressive cancer cells first, so that they can recoup the rest of the body. It was a miserable approach that she, in her weakened state, might be very unsuccessful with, might leave her with very undesirable side effects, and very likely would kill her. They normally use chemo on otherwise strong patients.
They could try radiation, but it would require very many treatments with pinpoint accuracy. It required a strong patient who could patiently and repeatedly follow explicit instruction. At this point, she was far too weak, having difficulty with her thinking, and would likely only suffer even more and die through the radiation approach. There was only one option left. It was to reduce the suffering while allowing her to die naturally.
While, selfishly, I could have made her suffer immensely to try to save her life through the other options, I could not. After prayerful consideration, she actually only had one more unavoidable appointment. If she was to die anyway, why make her suffer more besides? And if the Lord chose to heal her supernaturally, He still could. To die naturally would be her last unavoidable appointment.
Your Unavoidable Appointment:
Not to be morbid, but because you need to be fully aware, you have that last, unavoidable appointment too. Please prepare now, especially concerning your life-after-death eternity. Have you honestly repented of all your sins to God and accepted the forgiveness He offers only through the cross of His Son, Jesus? Please do so.
May God Bless You!
For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, 26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. Hebrews 9:24-28 (ESV)