Cured for Life

A student at university wrote the following letter to his parents.

Dear Mum and Dad,

You will be wondering why you haven’t heard from me for quite a while. Well, there have been one or two problems. The fact is a couple of months ago there was a fire in my flat and I lost all my worldly possessions. In fact, I only escaped with my life by jumping out of the first floor window. Landing on the ground I broke both my legs and finished up in hospital. I have been in plaster there for some time.

It wasn’t all bad, as whilst in hospital I met this wonderful nurse, and well, we knew we were just right for one another, so last Saturday we got married. Some of my friends were a bit worried that this may be too hasty a move on our part, but we are sure that our love for one another is strong enough to overcome the differences in social and ethnic background.

By this time in my letter, Mum and Dad, you may be feeling a bit worried and anxious. So let me tell you right now that everything up to this point in my letter is completely false. I made it up. The truth is last month I failed my exams. I just wanted you to get it in the right perspective!

We do need to get all the issues of life in the right perspective. As medics we have an advantage in that we have been trained to face the problems of life with equanimity (composure and in a level headed way).

TRAINING PRESSURES

A young lady was taking her anatomy viva exam. The other side of the green beige table cloth was the Professor of Anatomy and a lecturer. She had not answered one question correctly and would undoubtedly fail. The Professor felt sorry for her as she had done so badly. So he decided to ask her one simple question. He took a femur (thigh bone) out of a box and handed it to her. To keep it very simple he said,

“I don’t want you to tell me this bone’s name, just tell me how many of these you have.”

The student looked at the bone and answered,

‘Five!”.

At this point the bell for the end of the viva rang. The professor was puzzled. He could not understand how a bright girl had done so badly so he said to her,

“Anything you say now will not be taken into consideration, but please could you explain that answer.”

The student replied,

“Certainly Professor, I have one in my hand, two of my own and I am pregnant.”

She still failed but such pressures in our training do build us up.

There was another student at my hospital who had just been attached to his first surgical firm. It was a Thoracic Surgery unit with a very irascible, fearsome Consultant Surgeon. Each student was allocated certain patients whom they had to clerk and then accompany to the operating theatre. This student had never been to the operating theatre before and he arrived just after the operation had started. He poked his head nervously round the operating theatre door.

“Come in boy,” yelled the Consultant.

“Scrub boy,” he shouted again.

A kind nurse showed him how to scrub and put on a theatre gown and gloves and the student entered the theatre feeling completely out of place.

“Stand here boy,” ordered the Consultant.

The terrified student stood in place next to this ogre of a Consultant. The Consultant then thrust a diathermy wand into the student’s hand. He did not have a clue what to do. He was meant to touch the metal forceps of the consultant that was compressing a small bleeding vessel so that the flow of electricity wound seal the vessel. No-one had explained this.

“Buzz boy,” said the consultant as he grasped a bleeder with is forceps.

The poor student stood there paralysed. He didn’t know what to do.

“Buzz boy.”

The Consultants voice was getting louder. Still there was no response from the student.

The large Consultant Surgeon now became apoplectic. He screamed at the poor student,

“Buzz boy, won’t you.”

The student had to do something. So he opened his mouth behind his masked and sang,

“buzzzzz.”

Traumatic yes, but it taught that student something, even if it was to specialise in psychiatry.

POST QUALIFICATION PRESSURES

A young doctor was attending a medical conference. He was at lunch and his last course was a delicious chocolate gateau with a lot of cream. He then went for a short walk prior to the afternoon session. He looked down and saw a white blob on his tie. Peeved that he had been so careless with the gateau and cream, he scraped it off with his thumb and licked it. Only then did he realise his mistake. It wasn’t cream. A bird had been responsible. If only doctors didn’t make mistakes.

Fortunately young doctors are constantly being trained to face such stresses.

The senior Surgeon at my teaching hospital was Sir Alan Parkes. He was also President of the Royal College of Surgeons. On one occasion he was asked to undertake a domiciliary visit to see a patient with persistent vomiting. He felt the patient had intestinal obstruction and he told the General Practitioner that he would arrange his admission. The routine was for such patients to pass through the Accident and Emergency department of the hospital. Mr. Parkes duly phoned up the Casualty Officer to say he was sending the patient in for admission.

“Hello, this is Mr. Alan Parkes here, I have just seen a patient who I think has intestinal obstruction so I am sending him in by ambulance for admission.”

The young Casualty Officer had not recognised the senior Consultant. He was hoping to be a surgeon himself and was full of self confidence. He wasn’t going to accept any old rubbish patients into the hospital.

“Thank you,” the Casualty Officer said, “Do send the patient in. I will then assess him and, if he does require admission, I will arrange that.”

Sir Alan Parkes was not used to having his opinion being questioned by a junior inexperienced Casualty Officer, so he answered,

“Do you know who this is speaking to you? I am Sir Alan Parkes, Senior Surgeon to the London Hospital and President of the Royal College of Surgeons.”

The Casualty Officer was dumbstruck. What a terrible mistake to have made. But his training came to his aid, he thought quickly and said,

“Do you know who this is you are speaking to?”

“No,” said Sir Alan.

“Good!” replied the Casualty Officer and slammed the phone down.

There are many such stories but the rigours of our selection and training do help us cope with the difficulties we will face.

The pressure on all doctors is considerable and I suspect growing, partly because of the economic pressures we are forced to work under. We don’t have the facilities, time or money to treat all our patients as we would like to. There are also political rivalries between doctors.

I remember been asked to give a second opinion on a man in his fifties who had cancer of his stomach. He had been admitted with a severe haematemesis (vomiting of blood) but though life threatening at the time, had been successfully resuscitated. A similar haematemesis had occurred at another hospital a few weeks before. Another surgeon in my hospital had seen him but had turned him down for an operation on the basis that the tumour was advanced and the operation would be too risky. I was asked to see him for a second opinion by the medical oncologist who felt he could do little to help. The x-rays did show a large tumour. An operation would be very difficult to do and would almost certainly involve a total gastrectomy (removal of the whole stomach) and possibly adjacent organs. A further problem was that I did not want to upset my surgical colleague! What should I do?

I sat down with the patient and explained the problem. I explained that surgery would be risky, there could be complications, he could die from the operation, the tumour could be inoperable, and even if the operation was successful there was still the risk that the tumour would come back in the future. I did not tell him that it would also be very expensive and possibly not cost-effective for the National Health Service. The patient responded by saying that he had almost died on two occasions already and if nothing was done he felt he would have a fatal haematemesis in the near future. He and his family desperately wanted to take the risk of an operation. I had a long discussion with his Oncologist who was keen that we should try to remove the tumour. He said he would talk with my colleague and explain why he had asked for a further opinion. Fortunately the operation did go well. The whole of his stomach was removed and a loop of small bowel was brought up to join to his oesophagus (food pipe) so he would be able to eat and drink. He was discharged to have outpatient chemotherapy as a grateful man. However the whole episode was full of stresses, particularly for me.

SPIRITUAL PRESSURES

On another occasion a general Practitioner asked for me to go and see an old patient of mine in her flat. She was bed bound because of persistent vomiting. Two years before I had removed a large carcinoma of the caecum (large bowel in the appendix area). The tumour had been fixed to the abdominal wall so she had had a wide resection followed by both local radiotherapy and chemotherapy. When I saw her in her flat she could not keep any food down. Examining her abdomen revealed it was grossly distended and there was a firm mass in the right lower abdomen. There was little doubt that her cancer had come back and her prognosis was awful.

The problem I had was what to say to this elderly lady who lived alone. I could smile benignly and say,

“There’s nothing to worry about. We’ll get you right in no time!”

That may be encouraging in the short term but is untrue and soon she would discover I had lied to her, with a breakdown in trust. Alternatively I could tell her the stark truth.

“The situation is hopeless. There is little anyone can do. You’ll be dead soon.”

That may be truthful but it is certainly not loving. There must be another way. I sat down on her bed and held her hand. We talked about her previous operation and what had been done. I explained that it looked as if the tumour had returned and that she would be admitted to hospital to see what could be done to help.

“Does this mean I am going to die?” she enquired.

When people talk like this, it is easy to wish you were elsewhere.

This conversation must have taken over fifteen minutes. We talked about practical details such as who should be informed and who would look after her cat, which was a real concern for her. As I was leaving through the door, I felt bad. Everything I had said had been bad news; even though I had tried to soften the blow by the way by behaving in a kind way. I returned and asked her if she had a faith that helped her.

“I do sort of believe in God, but I don’t go to church,” she replied.

“I asked you that because it can be the only thing that makes sense of a difficult situation. It is wonderful to know that the God who made us loves us more than we can ever know. He knows what you are going through and wants to be close to you especially now. Sometimes he allows us to face problems so that we learn to depend on him now and so can later join him in heaven.”

She came into hospital and had a palliative operation. Significantly she then asked some spiritual questions and she was given a copy of the book ‘Cure for Life’ to try to answer them.

Some may be surprised that I talk about heaven to a lady who was not actively religious. The reason is that God sometimes uses suffering to help us think about eternal issues. The Christian scholar and apologist C.S.Lewis once wrote,

“God whispers to us in our joys, speaks to us in our consciences and shouts at us in our pains. They are his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

The Roman historian Livy wrote something similar,

“Adversity reminds men of religion.”

Some years ago I was taken to hear the evangelist Luis Palau in the Royal Albert Hall in London. The place was packed. Before he spoke there was a short sketch by some actors. Two angels were on the stage. I remember that one was very stiff and proper and he did all the talking, whereas the other was very attractive but said nothing. A dirty dishevelled man then entered and said,

“Oy! Is this the right place?”

The stiff angel looked down his nose at this unfortunate man and said,

“These are the gates of paradise, my man.”

“Oh goodie,” said the man.

The superior angel was clearly concerned. This man was clearly not the sort for paradise. He coughed,

“Excuse me, but I wonder if there has been some mistake. I wonder if you have come to the right place.”

“Oh yea, this is right. ‘e told me to come ‘ere.”

The stiff angel thought it was time to apply some tests he had heard of,

“Are you justified by faith alone?”

“What?”

“Have you been redeemed by the blood of the lamb?”

“Get on with yer! All I know is that I ‘as caught when doing a job robbing the governors house and I was done for it. They condemned me to death. As I was hanging there on the cross this good man next to me said, ‘Today, you’ll be with me in paradise’. So this is why I’m ‘ere.”

That put it so well. Often people think that the Christian good news is for religious, respectable people. Jesus made it abundantly clear that the opposite was true. He came to ‘seek and to save’ the lost.

Debbie was a patient of mine who, although only young, developed breast cancer. When first diagnosed she had transiently asked questions about the meaning of life but her interest passed. She was quite a hard lady who was divorced and cared for her two children. Unfortunately a couple of years later she developed a recurrence of the cancer in her neck. This was removed, followed by further chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Shortly afterwards she developed bony secondaries.

Later I was surprised to receive a phone call from her General Practitioner asking me if I would go and see her at home. After chatting with her for a while over tea she asked,

“What’s it like to die?”

I explained that we would control any pains with drugs and that the likely scenario was that she would feel increasingly tired and then go to sleep.

“But I’m not ready to die.”

I assumed that she was worried about her children but asked her what she meant,

“I’m worried because I am not ready to meet God.”

It is not often that people are willing to address the biggest problem in life in such a direct way. It was a joy to remind her who Jesus was and why he came. We talked about how God is a God of love and welcomes back to himself any who honestly turn back to him and ask him to forgive their rebellion against him. She was thrilled at the news that she could become right with God. There and then she prayed and asked God to forgive her and welcome her back into His family. She knew some Christians in her village and promised to get in touch with them. I heard later that she became involved in a Bible Study with a local group of Christians and her whole demeanour changed. Previously she had been hard and critical but now she had become part of a warm fellowship where she cared for others as much as they cared for her. The realisation that God loved a person like her never left her.

Relatively few people actually turn back to God in this sort of situation. This is why he wants us to sort these issues out while we have time.

MISUNDERSTANDING

Too often people misunderstand Jesus. They unfortunately associate him with what they have seen of church. Boredom, requests for more money, irrelevance to normal life and hypocritical behaviour are many people’s perceptions. But Jesus was not like that.

One man approached Jesus because his brother had taken a greater share of a family inheritance and he thought this was unfair. He obviously thought that Jesus had come to introduce fairness and good ethics.

The Parable of the Rich Fool

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

14 Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” 15 Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”

16 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

21 “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

This man had missed the point of life. Jesus was more concerned about his greed than his success. This man was preoccupied with wrong priorities. He had spent his life climbing the ladder of success, only to realise, too late, that the ladder was leaning against the wrong wall. His real problem was that he was wrapped up in himself. Notice how often ‘I’, ‘my’, and ‘myself’ come in his vocabulary. He concludes that he has done well for himself, so why not take life easy and enjoy himself? In reply God says,

“You fool.”

This is a tough lesson but it must be heard again today. The Bible, the Word of God, is not meant to be a feast for our ears but a hammer for our lives. Its message needs to be heard again, before it is too late. God’s people must pass on its message to our society.

In a national survey 70 per cent of people described themselves as ‘Christian’. The problem is that most do not know the meaning of the word. A patient came to my clinic wearing a beautiful silver cross round her neck. As we were talking I asked her if the cross meant she was a Christian or wasn’t she sure.

“Yes, I am,” she said hesitantly, “but it depends what you mean by a Christian.”

“Surely a Christian is someone who is sold out to the Lord Jesus,” I replied,

She looked down,

“Then I’m not,”

One Sunday I attended the morning service in my local church. A retired couple entered who seemed new to the church so I went and sat with them. As we were leaving after the service I invited them to join us for coffee. The conversation with the husband then went like this.

“Have you been to this church before?”

“No, this is the first time.”

“Excuse me asking you but are you a committed Christian yourself or aren’t you sure about these things?”

“My wife is a committed Christian but I would better describe myself as a committed churchman.” I later learned that he served on his local Parish church council for 20 years but he had never understood the gospel.

“If that is so, would you like to join us at our next Christianity Explored course to get these things sorted out? We have a supper to start with and then read about what Jesus taught and look at the evidence for what he says being true.”

“That would be very interesting, I would like to come.”

He became a radiant Christian and remains a very good friend.

There is so much ignorance and misunderstanding of what Jesus taught.

I was taking a teaching ward round in my ward which was attended by many doctors and students. We came to the bed of a very pleasant lady in her 50’s who had been admitted for terminal care. She had liver secondaries and was feeling very weak. She asked if she could have a private talk with me later. When I returned that afternoon she said,

“I am finding this business of dying very difficult. Could you speed it up for me?

She clearly wanted ‘euthanasia’. I replied that we did not do that, but we went on to have a discussion about what she was finding difficult and the things we could do to help her. I wondered if there was some spiritual problem underlying her anxieties so I continued,

“I wonder if there is a reason that God is keeping you going like this. Do you think you have got everything ready?”

“I think so,” she replied, “I have cleared all my cupboards at home.”

“Yes, but on a deeper level, are you sure you are ready to meet God or aren’t you sure about these things?”

“Oh! I think I’m ready, I’ve never done anyone any harm.”

Here was this lady about to meet her maker and she wasn’t ready. Fortunately our hospital had Gideon Bibles in the bedside lockers so I asked if I could show her a few passages.

“I would like that,” she replied.

The first thing she needed to be clear about was that when we die we will face judgement. I wondered about using the passage in 2 Thessalonians 1:8-10 but decided that the wording was too aggressive for this situation so we looked up Hebrews 9:27,

“. . . man is destined to die once and after that to face judgement.”

The great attraction of using this verse is that the adjoining verses both talk about Jesus dying to “take away the sins of many people.”

I illustrated this by placing a book on my open hand, and explained that this book represented all my sin, which acts as a barrier between God and myself. My religious activities, which was illustrated by my fingers actively wriggling under the book, cannot help get rid of the barrier caused by my sin. She seemed to understand this so we went on to talk about sin and to show that no-one is naturally good enough for God. Her claim about ‘not doing anybody any harm’ was both untrue and certainly inadequate. So we looked up Romans 3:11.

“There is no-one righteous, not even one; there is no-one who understands, no-one who seeks God.”

She then agreed that being right with God was something she had never bothered about at all. We also looked up Isaiah 59:2,

“But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden your face from you, so that he will not hear.”

As we talked she began to understand her problem.

“How can I get right with God?” she asked.

Sitting on her bed we talked about the Lord Jesus. We talked about his death on that cross and how he died to take away the consequences of our sin and to enable us to be right with God. We then turned to 1 Peter 2:24.

“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.”

As we talked it all seemed so clear to her, the Holy Spirit was convicting her of sin and righteousness and judgement in a non-aggressive way. She then said,

“I need to be forgiven by Jesus. Will you pray for me now?”

At this point the nurses sitting at the adjacent nurses’ station jumped up and pulled the screens round even though they give hardly any privacy. They must have been listening. I prayed, thanking God for what he had done for us all on the cross, and asking that he would put her name in the ‘Book of Life’, forgive her sin and give her his Spirit, just as he had promised. She was very grateful. I left her with a list of the verses we had looked up as well as two more on assurance,

“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” John 1:12

“I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has passed over from death to life.” John 5:24

The Lord gave her great joy that persisted. Her husband phoned me up the next morning,

“Are you the doctor who spoke to my wife yesterday?”

“Yes,” I replied rather hesitantly as I didn’t know what was coming.

“We are not a religious family in any way, but I would like to thank you for spending the time with her. She has such peace. Would you mind explaining to me what you said to her?

He phoned me at home a few days later at the weekend and came for tea. I was interested to see that somehow he had obtained a large unused Gideon Bible, Authorised Version, which had the words, ‘Headmistress’ printed in bold type on the outside. We went over the gospel in a very similar way. He wasn’t ready to commit himself to Christ but I gave him a copy of ‘Cure for Life’ and said he could phone at any time.

His wife moved to the local hospice where I visited her on one occasion. She was holding firmly onto her Saviour even though she was sleepier from the drugs. We looked at Romans 8:1 which is another great verse on assurance.

“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because . . .”

To make this simpler to understand, I wrote her name on a piece of paper and placed it inside the Bible.

“Let this Bible represent the Lord Jesus and this piece of paper represent you. Because you are now ‘in Christ’ when you meet God he will not see your sins at all, he will see that you are in Christ and have ‘his righteousness’. Furthermore Jesus is now in heaven and because you are in Christ he will take you to be with him there.”

The nurses told me that she later asked them to read her the whole chapter of Romans 8. About two weeks later I had a phone call from her husband to say that she had just died. Apparently one of the last things she said to her husband was to ask him to become a Christian and made him promise to “go to the doctor’s church”. He did faithfully come and he later attended a Basics course when he also committed himself to Christ.

Those of us in the medical profession have been given many privileges. We learn to help others cope with their problems, yet too often we just focus on physical and biochemical issues. How we need a new generation of doctors who are able to help people in every aspect of their lives. Our temporary lives here shout out that there is more to life and Jesus confirms that there is.

BVP

August 2012