By
Ada Brownell
“If I’m ever seriously ill and in the hospital, you are
the only person who can look out for me,” said my cousin, who had several
health problems.
Not long afterward she lay in a hospital bed, alone. Although
in severe pain, she had driven herself to the hospital, hitting another car in
the parking lot. She hadn’t taken time to call me. I lived across town.
She had emergency
hernia surgery, but when I got there the next morning, something was wrong. Her
abdomen swelled and grew larger. She was in misery.
I prayed with her, tried to encourage, but knew she was
in trouble physically. She knew, too.
“Do you think she might have sepsis?” I asked the doctor
when he came in.
He discovered she was septic. After a CT scan, she was
taken back to surgery.
Sepsis is a potentially
life-threatening complication of an infection. Sepsis occurs when chemicals
released into the bloodstream to fight the infection trigger inflammatory
responses throughout the body, triggering changes that can damage organs,
causing them to fail.
When my cousin came out of
surgery, I was informed her blood pressure went down too much and her kidneys
were damaged. She was on a respirator, too.
The first thing I did was
turn off the television in her room which was turned to a soap opera and other
shows my cousin, a committed Christian, wouldn’t choose to listen to or watch.
I held her hand, talked to
her, prayed with her, but she was in a medically induced coma. The respirator
also was problem. The straps dug into her face, and I asked the nurse to make
that more comfortable for her. The nurse loosened the straps.
Although medical personnel
said her kidneys might recover, after about a week they concluded her kidneys
weren’t working at all, so I asked them to do dialysis. They did.
But yet her condition
worsened. In case she could hear, and many people who had been in a coma later
said they could hear, I began to softly sing hymns.
“There’s not a friend like
the lowly Jesus,” I sang from “No, Not One!” I followed that with “What a
friend we have in Jesus,” “In the Garden,” “Jesus is Passing This Way,” and
many others. I hadn’t sung solos in church for years, but every day I visited,
prayed, and sang.
One day as I walked out of
her room, a nurse met me.
“I kept wondering where
the music came from. Then I saw you singing. It was wonderful. I so enjoyed
hearing those songs.”
After nearly a month, my
cousin died and I prayed the promises of God with her as she passed. I’ll never
know if my solos helped, but I was thrilled that nurse was blessed by the
words, composed by Christians who also went through sickness, trials and
hardships, but their faith was in the Solid Rock, Christ Jesus.
Those composers knew that
whether they lived or died they would be with the Lord, as the Apostle Paul
declared. I expect to meet my cousin in heaven. The glorious hope is something
to sing about, but also something to believe and stand on, live by and go to
Glory with.
Jesus said, “Jesus said, ‘I
am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, yet
shall he live. And whoever lives and believes in me will never die” (John
11:25-26)..
.
