DH has been dealing with chronic back issues for years. For the most part, he is ok and can function with minimal limitations. However, there are times that his back gives him pain to the point that it’s incapacitating.
We hit that time this past week. Last Saturday, DH went down with back pain, and it proceeded to get worse. He went to see his primary care doctor. He proceeded to suggest that DH had the flu. The flu?! He even gave him a test to see if it was the flu or not. Guess what…NOT!! Then, he shot him with a steroid and said, “let’s wait and see what happens”.
(The last time this happened, eight years ago, DH was stuck in bed for a month, before they decided he was a candidate for surgery.)
The pain continued and by the next Saturday, he was miserable. When a person is in pain, it carries over into everything, every thought pattern, every action, or inaction. We decided to take him to the E.R. and have a second opinion, other than “let’s wait and see.”
The Emergency Room was relatively quiet, and we did not have to wait too long, a blessing for DH, who could not sit for too long.
While we were waiting to be seen, another man was also in the waiting room, leaving a message on his phone to someone else. Afterward, he came over and said ‘hi’ to David. He is a faithful attendee of Celebrate Recovery and had to bring a friend in who had a full on heart attack the night before, (David is the Worship Leader for our church’s Celebrate Recovery program). He shared that CR prayed for David last night (He had to have Paul lead instead, and he stayed home). We told him we would pray for his friend (who is recovering well.)
We were seen quickly and the P.A. who attended to David said exactly the appropriate words we needed to hear. He was not dismissive like the Primary Care doctor was, and gave David a solid protocol to follow, (which includes staying drugged up in bed this weekend…). We are going to research some of the other conservative treatments that have been suggested.
As we were leaving, a precious elderly women hobbled in, accompanied by her husband. She was in shorts, and both of her knees were a bloody mess. She had grapefruit sized, blood covered knees. The blood was dark red, and completely covered the whole knee. My heart went out to her. Even though she was in pain, and in distress, she was concerned about getting blood on the floor, and was trying to keep the blood from falling to the floor. As we were passing her, we heard her crying and said to the admitting nurse, it was a chemical burn. She had a gallon of something in her hand. I placed my hand on her husband’s shoulder and said we’d be praying for both of them.
David and I prayed for her as we drove home. After I dropped him off and went to pick up lunch and prescriptions, I prayed for the staff at the E.R. room. Can you imagine what they encounter everyday? While we were there, there was a suicidal woman, a woman with heart issues, a woman with what she thought was a kidney stone, but turned out to be sciatica, and the woman with the chemical burn. And these were just the ones we were able to overhear/encounter! This was within a two hour period, and it seemed quiet!
I have a renewed amount of respect for those who work in this environment everyday.
By the way, today DH feels 80% better and has hope. Hope is a good thing!