Nine days out from our kidney transplant

My beloved Betsy gave me her kidney March 4. She is doing well and is much more mobile than myself. I have had a couple of fairly minor surgeries so I was pretty clueless as to what the aftermath would be like. Wow. Made a believer out of me. Pain meds mess up your digestive track so I have had logjams the size of Texas. The bed jacked up my back. I was on serious back meds and my back still hurts when I walk. I have to dig my finger into my lumbar region just to be ambulatory.

Oh, then there was the minor rejection. Apparently this is fairly common. My body will never legitimately recognize Betsy’s kidney and I have to take thousands of dollars of meds per month that compromise my immune system to drug my body into thinking the kidney belongs there. I will have to drug it the rest of my life or for the life of Betsy’s kidney. To shock my body into accepting the new organ they had to drip massage amounts of anti-rejection meds until it was so drunk that any ‘ol organ would have looked good.

Most people don’t realize that they leave my old kidneys in my body. They will eventually atrophy and stop working. Betsy’s kidney is placed right below my waistline and I look like either Frankenstein (I’m stapled shut) or that I have Mt. Everest sticking out sideways making my stomach protrude. I have no idea when the swelling will go down.

Saved the hardest until last. Because dialysis can only emulate some of what the kidneys do you eventually get really messed up. Most people die on dialysis of heart related issues if you’ve been on it any length of time. In my case, last October I noticed at dinner that my toes began to feel numb, not the kind of numb where you can’t feel anything, but numb in painful way. This condition is called neuropathy and is the most common disease in America you’ve never heard of. Many millions of people have it. It is the loss of peripheral nerves. Apart from a healing from God (which I deeply believe in; I have personally prayed for hundreds and hundreds of people who have been healed of everything from cancer to blindness) dead nerves do not regenerate. Compared to the horrors of kidney disease, neuropathy is more than twice as bad. Every night it feels like someone has a blow torch aimed at your toes. There is no known cure and the only relief I get at night is a topical cream I get at the drug store. Last night I was dipping my feet in ice water to numb the numbness.

I cried out to the Lord for his help when Betsy and my daughter were out of the room. I asked the Lord if he was shoving me aside after getting this website going and doing so many things through NothinsGonnaStopIt! I felt like Jeremiah when he asked the Lord, “Will you be to me like a deceptive brook?” Was he going to stop me from spreading the story of his glory? That made no sense. The DVDs are ready to go. The workbook will be published soon. Over a thousand people have downloaded the seminar and almost 2,000 people have read the blog articles. Was he cutting my effectiveness short?

This morning when I got up I distinctly had the impression to read Psalm 102. I wasn’t sure what it was about but it said at the top “A prayer of one afflicted” written by an unknown Israelite as a cry for healing. The disease is unnamed but how did he describe what he had? He wrote that his bones burned like a furnace. Suddenly the Lord had my attention. He went on to say, “For you have lifted me up and thrown me aside.” Wow. I read on. He asked the Lord if He was cutting short his days.

As is typical of a psalm of lament, the most common type of psalm in the Psalter, after the lament (the complaint) there comes a “but…” and then an affirmation of the faithfulness of the Lord. The psalmist appeals to the lordship of Yahweh who remains enthroned despite the condition of the Israelite and affirms that it was time for Him to arise and have compassion on Zion for it was time for Him to favor it; the appointed time had come.

May it be so, Lord. I think I’m the most prayed for guy in the world. Thanks for all those of you who have sent me wonderful notes through the NothinsGonnaStopIt! response feature. I can’t stop because he is still enthroned and the heavens resound with the story of his glory. His story must be told. Please pray for a rapid healing for Bets and me. Please pray for the healing of my toes. Please pray for the healing of my back. My surgeon called our kidney transplant "textbook." That's prayer.