Unexpected Support

When my uncle picked my dad and I and the girls up from the airport a week ago Tuesday, he let us know that my grandmother, who is in her mid-eighties, was in the hospital. She and Granddad had just been out to Texas for the funeral of Granddad's last living sibling, and had flown home the day before us. And promptly gone to the hospital, evidently. Grandmommy had uncontrolled bleeding. When we got there, they still hadn't determined exactly what was going on, but within a day or two they figured it out-- diverticulosis, for those of you who know what that is.

The illness was made worse by the fact that Grandmommy has been taking a blood-thinning medication, which is supposed to reduce her risk of stroke. The doctors decided to take her off the medication and put her on a different yet similar medication. Because she would still be on a blood-thinner, they decided surgery would be necessary to prevent the recurrence of the diverticulosis. Grandmommy is not a good candidate for surgery.

As you can imagine, this had all of us shaking our heads, but We Are Not The Doctors. What could we do?

The next morning, my dad talked on the phone with a minister friend of his that lives in Southern California. They only talked briefly before being disconnected. Then he called his friend's cell number and got connected to someone, but not his friend, although he didn't realize it at once. This person asked Dad about his mom, and listened to Dad's detailed account of her condition. The man on the phone asked Dad why the doctors didn't have Grandmommy on aspirin to lower her risk of stroke. Dad explained that aspirin upset her stomach, and the man said that if she took 81 mg on a full stomach, she would not be nauseated. Dad was very interested in what this man was saying, although by now he realized it was not his friend Joe. Finally, the person on the phone asked if there was anything he could do, Dad asked him to pray, and the man said he would, and said for Dad to call if he needed to talk.

A bit later Dad and my granddad went to the hospital, where Dad proceeded to talk to Grandmommy's primary doctor about aspirin. And talk. And recommended that the primary talk to the other doctors about it. Finally the primary doc did just that. The doctors put their heads together and decided that the aspirin solution would do fine. And surgery would not be necessary.

Later, my dad called the number again. The man he had been talking to was a doctor-- an internal medicine doc in Southern California.

I think he was doing the work of an angel.

My grandmother was in church with us this past weekend. Isn't that a beautiful miracle?