Holding On
by Linnette R. Mullin
Battle after battle. Will it never end? I recline on the couch helpless. Even holding a book takes great effort. My body weak, I tremble and ache with every attempt to move.
I finish my book and lay down. Sheer exhaustion takes over. My body is so heavy I can hardly move or even raise my head, and getting up to use the bathroom takes great effort. I need to take my medicine, but it'll have to wait until later. I'm just too weak to get it.
What is wrong with me?
I had avoided seeing the doctor following my second pancreatitis attack. After all, the test results following the first one came back normal, so I didn't have it, right? The attack sounded like I could have a kidney stone. Instructed to run to the ER for further evaluation if symptoms persisted, the attack subsided and didn't return. I had avoided the ER once again.
I hate going to the ER. Doctors who don't know you and who aren't Lyme literate…they give you those funny looks that tell you you've lost your mind…your story is too incredible to believe - especially when your test results have the tendency to come back normal.
I, also, hesitate to call the doctor's office. Time, money, energy…frustration at seemingly no answers and miniscule progress after four years of treatment. I'm so tired of feeling like a fool. Don't get me wrong. I'm blessed with the best of doctors, but I hate talking through nurses. I never get the answers I need. It's just too difficult to explain everything third person over the phone, you know? And what chronically ill person can afford to run to the doctor every time there's a crisis?
It's 4:55 p.m. - too late for an appointment. Should I go to the ER? Scared and feeling like I'm going to die, I give in and call my doctor. Knowing it's too late in the day for him to return my call, I still feel a measure of relief just leaving him a message. I trust God to get it to him at the right time. I can hold on a little longer.
Typically, I'm a strong person. It takes a lot to make me cry. But now, I'm hit with exhaustion like I haven't felt in years and I'm weepy. I can't seem to help myself. I wish I could fall asleep and never wake up. Thankfully, God strengthens me a bit and prompts me to take my hydrocortisone.
During the course of the evening, I decide that eight weeks of torture is enough and I need answers. I've put off seeing the doctor for too long and I intend to make an appointment as soon as the office opens the next morning.
Though I sleep past 8:00, the nurse calls me. Doctor wants me to double my hydrocortisone for a week. But, needing more answers, I make an appointment.
I write down everything I can think of…every symptom, every pain, every weakness, every weird neurological sensation - all the gory details, so I can give him the overall view of my life for the past eight weeks.
After listening, examining, and asking questions, he tells me that I do have sub-acute pancreatitis. He said, "We just didn't happen to catch it in the blood work." He also said that between all the illness, all the pain, and all the problems created by pancreatitis, my neurological system is going bonkers. My brain is trying to figure out how to cope with it all and do what it needs to do in order to heal me. So, it tells the adrenal glands to excrete cortisol (a natural hormone affecting the proper function of every organ in your body). The problem lies in that there is no cortisol to secrete - Addison's disease.
How could I have forgotten my need for hydrocortisone? For now, it is my life saver and life sustainer - physically speaking, that is. It saved my life once before, following a heat stroke, and it apparently has kept me alive and going for nearly three years. I ended up in this crisis because I had been missing doses. I pray I never make that mistake again.
Ironic, isn't it, how you can fear that you're dying and wish to die all at the same time. It seems contradictory, yet it happens. I rarely ever sink so low, but I can't deny that it does happen now and then.
What makes me hold on? What keeps me from giving up?
God always reminds me that my babies, my young men, need me. I imagine the devastation of their hearts and lives if I were to pass away. It provides me with the will power to keep going. I know God would take care of them if I were to die, but I'm not ready to go there just yet and, apparently, God isn't either. So, I trust Him to keep me - even when it means tough days like these.
It's not always easy to accept God's will, especially when it involves chronic illness. Does God enjoy my being sick? No! He takes no pleasure in it. But, He uses it to teach me, to draw me closer to Him, to make me more like Christ…maybe even to cause me to long for heaven rather than set my affections on the things of this world.
I love the invitation Christ gives in Matthew 11:28, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (ESV) In verses 29-30, He continues by saying, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (ESV)
When I hold on to Jesus, or maybe it's Him holding on to me, it is far easier to bear the suffering. Through exercising faith in Him, by clinging to Him through it all, He truly gives love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control as the fruit of His Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23, ESV). And it is this fruit that makes His yoke easy and His burden light - enabling me to hold on in the most trying moments of life.
What are you holding on to? What keeps you going? Is it Jesus?
Or maybe you don't want to hold on. Maybe you want to give up. Please don't. It's not too late to place your life in His loving hands.
