...Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs, and he will give you all you need from day to day if you live for him and make the Kingdom of God your primary concern.
Matthew 6:32,33
Please forgive all the technical jargon. A prostatectomy is a surgical procedure to remove the prostate, a ball of flesh surrounding the outlet of the urinary bladder that tends to enlarge in elderly men, causing urinary obstruction.
A catheter is a rubber tube used to drain fluid from the bladder.
It's three-quarters of an hour beyond midnight and I just got out of the operating theatre. It began simply enough at about 8 p.m. as we took the elderly man in for his operation. Everything seemed to be going according to the script. He cooperated, the anesthesia worked, the incisions were perfect and, best of all, blood loss was minimal. My chief, the surgeon even toyed with the idea of not packing the wound with adrenaline-soaked gauze (which is used to minimize bleeding). "Better do it for what it's worth," I encouraged him. The surgery went very well, much better than most of our previous prostatectomies. Even the perennially uncooperative catheter worked this time.
We finished in record time, and as he stitched the skin and I packed up the instruments for the decontamination soak, we congratulated ourselves on the success. But then, he noticed that the catheter was draining bloodied fluid. No surprise there, but it gradually got redder and redder. We tried every maneuver in the book - and a few outside - to stop the bleeding without having to re-enter, but to no avail. So we had to open up again - remove all the stitches, enter the bladder and find the source of bleeding. We managed to isolate the bleeders and closed up again. By now exasperation was growing and we cautiously cast furtive glances at the catheter. Right on cue, as he was stitching the skin, the fluid turned red again.
Then I did the sensible thing. I prayed. One of those arrow prayers that went, "God, please just put your finger where this bleeding is and stop it so we can get out of here."
"I'm going to open up again" said the chief.
"No, just wait a minute" I said, as I tried to exercise my faith. And true enough, the fluid cleared. Whew! "Thank you Lord."
Hardly had I expressed my gratitude than the blood came flowing again.
So in we went for the third time. By now everything was coming undone. Instruments slipped to the floor, ligatures came loose, sutures got entangled and even a needle-stick injury. Frustration increased as surgical consumables got exhausted and hunger kicked in, but the bleeding wouldn't stop. We eventually managed to control it and the chief asked my advice, "Can I close up?"
I looked at him with pursed lips. He wasn't going to get a "yes" from me. So we waited. And sure enough, it started again. Blood oozing from just about everywhere. I don't know how we eventually got ourselves out of there but it wasn't without more than a little desperation.
What had started out as a relatively simple procedure had turned into, by his own admission, my chief's most difficult prostatectomy yet. But we finished. I guess that's the bottom line. We finished and thank God for that. It just goes to show that nothing in life is a given. The things we take for granted can take a turn for the worse at a moment's notice and our lives all become complicated by the simple things. But through it all, God remains faithful and He gives us the grace to thrash them out. And for that I'm grateful.
With love, Doosuur.
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