Friday, January 9, 2009

Getting Well, but Why?


George is a young man who is a medical mystery to me. He came to Nazarene Hospital because the left side of his body was paralyzed. Left leg, left arm, left side of face and (this messes things up) the left side of his forehead. That's not supposed to go with the other stuff. And on top of that, he has something on x-ray that doesn't fit with the rest, either. It's a change in his 2nd lumbar vertebra. That is not a location where it could have anything to do with his arm or face. Leg maybe, but not the other stuff.

All the explanations we thought about seem unlikely. A malignant tumor that has sent metastases to different locations, thus affecting different parts of the body. Or maybe tuberculosis in his brain, along with TB of the spine.

At any rate, it looked like he was just getting worse, and would continue that way. Having nothing else to do, we started TB meds, prayed and hoped.

A few days later he said that he thought he could move his hand a little more. Then the next day the leg improved. This morning when I asked him to raise his eyebrows, they both went up equally! He's doing well enough that he doesn't really to be in the hospital, but his home is too far for him to come for his daily injection. So today he moved to the TB ward. It's been completely vacant for a couple of weeks, so he and his wife will have the whole place to themselves, interrupted only by a daily nurse visit for meds.

I'm still not sure if the meds I ordered are part of his improvement or not, but I'm thankful to God for making him better.

COMMENT

3 comments:

  1. Andy -
    I recently got approved to come to PNG in June for a month, with my husband and our daughter. I found your blog today through the hospital site, and just wanted to let you know how much I'm looking forward to being able to serve however I'm able. I'm a fourth-year FM/OB fellow, so this will be sort of my "final exam".

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  2. God is good!
    Thanks for working for Him there. We miss you guys. Big floods here the last 2 days and 530 was closed, thought of you. Our two feet plus of snow is almost all melted, yeah!
    Love,
    Nancy, for all

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  3. Wow. Crazy story. Very cool though.

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