A PLETHORA OF CLOTS AND A MYRIAD OF PRAYER
So I have been on a journey, a journey which had its own language. It was the language of hospital, doctors and nurses, of scans and tests and my new key term, the D-dimer!
This term is now an important one in my vocabulary. The closest I had got to this, up until a few weeks ago, was one of the treats of my youth, the dime bar! I now know the D- dimer is a measurement that relates to how our blood clots. I now have the dubious information that tells me when this number is healthy it is less than 0.5. On the day I was admitted to hospital my D-dimer was 6.4 and on the day I left the hospital it was 1.5. This was after just over a week of the best of care.
Some have used the language of it being a wake up call or a warning shot, but for me it was an unexpected turn on the path and whilst not without its challenges it also had its share of graces.
This all happened very quickly and began with me being unwell at the beginning of Mass on a Wednesday morning a few weeks ago. Suddenly perspective changed. When I returned to the house on being discharged from hospital I looked at the three items on my desk that I had thought were so urgent. These items had sat on my desk for ten days and I realised that in fact they were still not urgent!
It is indeed a sobering moment when the doctor says ‘you have a plethora of clots on both lungs’.
There again is little relief when I, having asked how many, his reply is simply, ‘we gave up counting.’ I think the correct medical term is a bi-lateral pulmonary embolism.
Are you bored yet? If you are still reading then you are certainly a dedicated rumbler!
There’s nothing worse than a fella going on about the intricacies of his own health.
So why am I going on about it?
Very simply because confronted so quickly and expectedly with my own fragility, indeed my own mortality, perspective shifted substantially.
I, who have given many’s a sermon on the love of God and indeed on the theme Be Not Afraid, found myself stopped in my tracks.
Key questions arose:
What is the unfinished business of my life? In other words if time is short what needs to be done and done quickly?
What state are my relationships in? Do those whom I love, know it?
Is there anywhere, anyone needs healing?
How is my relationship with the Lord?
What made a huge difference to me was the sure knowledge that there was so many people praying for me. At one stage it struck me that no matter how many clots I had, there was as many people again praying for me.
For every clot there was somebody praying for me.
Isn’t that something? Beautiful. Special.
So beside the plethora of clots there was a myriad of prayer.
Fraternally JoeMcD 14. 04.
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