DNGILB: Trust me, I'm a doctor.

There are little whispers of thoughts that occur deep down. I never verbalized mine, but they were there. "Life is never going to turn out the way you'd hoped." or "God has forsaken you." At first I resisted. As the days went by and I kept getting smacked in the face by these little whispers, I cracked. I said, "it's true." Again, these thoughts were never verbalized or shared, but they killed hope. What happens next? A resignation. A denouncing of God's promise. I felt "I'm really not ever going to have any lasting joy." What do you do when you believe that? For me, I felt that in life... I'd just have to "grind it out"... Do what I'm supposed to do. Because I belong to God. Joy, though, wasn't an option. I'd have to settle for periodic "relief". Relief in the form of little distractions that cause me to feel good for just a little bit, before I have to face reality again. This is the plot of t

Working in a hospital can be gross. Not too long ago, one of the physical therapists and a PT student were walking an old dude down the hall… Old-Dude reaches back behind his gown and pulls out a turd. Hands it to the PT student. He takes it from him and runs it to the bathroom while the more seasoned PT keeps on walking Old-Dude. They make it back to the room… Old-Dude pulls out yet another turd… hands it off… and crawls up into bed. Nice walk. Killed two birds with one stone… well, lets call it two birds and two “stones”... HA!!! The PT student got an A for professionalism. Well done sir... well done. David

Not too infrequently, I come across patients who are experts at giving extemporaneous detail. I've mentioned this before, but I had such a classic case recently it drove me to blog, yet again. He could have summed it up as, "I took four baby aspirin." Or better yet, "I took aspirin." Instead, he went the verbose route. "Well, as I was walking out of the house... well, actually, I wasn't out of the house, my wife was coming into the house, but I told her that I just didn't feel right and I know that you just discharged me but this was completely different and since I had a heart surgery I was concerned it could have been a heart attack so as I was walking with the wife through the kitchen on the way to the garage I saw the bottle of aspirin on the counter. It was baby aspirin. We leave it out on the counter. We don't have any little kids around the place so its not dangerous or anything. It's just me and the misses and the wiener dog. Anyways

A few blogs ago, I relearned a lesson of praising God even when in pain. My way of praising was to recognize and praise God for all of the wonderful attributes of himself and other areas in my life that feel blessed. God said... "That's great. But its not enough!" Yesterday came and seemed it would shape up to be a decent day. Things changed. Vanessa had a bad pain descend on her abdomen and it was unrelenting. Usually, the pain comes in a wave. Coming. Going. This time, it came and stayed. She took some pain medicine. Curled up in a ball. Prayers sent up asking for speedy relief. I texted some friends and family asking for their powerful prayer as well. Thank you for the prayers. Before pain had a chance to be relieved, my wife sought God. Isn't this why God created pain? It is to direct us to address a problem, turning to Him.