Brave Lydia II
Suppose, as an adult, you had your bellly sliced open, your appendix removed, your intestines taken outside your body and placed on a table where they were “irrigated” (to use the medical phrase) with an antibiotic. Then they replaced these same intestines back where they belonged and sewed you up and attached the following things to you: a nasal-gastric tube down your nose and throat to your stomach to suck out all the bile generated by said stomach because your intestines are asleep and won’t accept said bile; a catheter because your urinary tract is also asleep; an IV in your left hand–which pops out in the middle of the night and has to be redone in your right hand; a set of wires attached to your chest to monitor your heart rate and breathing rate; and yet another tube attached to your right thumb which emits a red glow and thereby monitors your blood oxygen level. And suppose people come in at all times of the day and night tugging on all these devices, and giving you shots, and taking your temperature under your arm, and your blood pressure by wrapping a pressurized sleeve around your leg which causes your leg to move which in turn causes your incision to move and which in turn causes your incision to hurt such that you involuntarily cry out “ow, ow.”
Now suppose all the above is true as an adult, except now YOU ARE ONLY THREE YEARS OLD! How would you feel then?
Well, that’s what happened to my precious Lydie, and it’s hard to see it happen I’ll tell you. But once again she was a brave little girl who endured it all as best she could in a strange place with strange people coming in and out. The high point of the day was when the nice Volunteer Lady found a VHS copy of “The Wiggles”, which Lydia watched at least twice today and which acted almost as a pain medication in that it distracted her from the pain of her healing.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget, with all the high tech stuff described above, and the powerful antibiotics available today, that people often died from burst appendixes half a century ago. The stuff that comes out of a burst appendix is bad stuff: bacteria that can do you real harm. So we don’t take Lydia’s recovery for granted, and we are grateful that the Lord in His providence, has provided such wonderful high tech stuff so that our precious granddaughter can overcome this major medical event in her life and be with us for many more years to bring great joy to our lives through her charismatic personality. Though it was a very hard day for her, that personality nevertheless came through. And I think she even managed a little smile when her big sister came to visit complete with a set of beautiful paper flowers she had made in pre-school today. Thanks, Susanna. I love you and your sister and brother very much. Grandpop.