Praise God, He Still Heals our Afflictions

by Bob Russell, ©2023 

(Nov. 2, 2023) — [See previous chapters of this series here.]

I started this series a couple of months after returning home from the nursing home I was in after the severe stroke I suffered on August 19, 2014.  The series has been about my journey for just over nine years and two months since the stroke, but this edition will focus on a medical event that occurred in 2006. 

People often ask me how I can stand on my faith that I will fully recover from the effects of the stroke. On July 4, 2006 my wife and I attended an Independence Day event at the OU  Shusterman Center in Tulsa called “A Taste of Tulsa Barbeque.”  We paid $10 each to be able to visit food trailers set up by Oklahoma food vendors, sample their food, and vote for who we thought was best.  My wife and I both ate chicken and beef but I also sampled pork products.

We got back home at 4:00 p m that day and about 5:00 I began feeling very sick to my stomach.  In a matter of minutes I was at the toilet suffering through violent vomiting.  Somewhere in the process a vein in my back exploded. I could not sleep that night due to severe pain in my back and abdomen.  The next morning I went to the doctor to find out what was wrong.  He took one look at me and had his nurse escort me across the street to the Claremore Hospital emergency room.  As I was filling out paperwork I became very dizzy and could barely stand at the window.  The intake nurse called for a wheelchair, which they sat me in just before I passed out.  I woke up a while later in a hospital bed.  After I passed out they took me to get x-rays and decided I needed to be admitted.

I was told there was a blood clot a little bigger than a softball between my stomach and spine.  The pressure put on my stomach and spine was the cause of the severe pains.  I was told about the clot and that I had something they called C-Diff.  I still don’t know what that is, but it was serious enough to keep me in the hospital.  The next day I was taken for a CT scan of my trunk area.  I was there ten days, having CT scans daily.  Dr. Korgan came in a few days later and told me the scans had shown three cysts on my liver, each about the size of a nickel, and that they could be cancerous.  He said fluid needed to be taken from them to be tested for cancer but that he didn’t feel he had the necessary skill, because if the needle penetrated too far and punctured the liver and if they were cancerous, it would spread the cancer into my liver, a death sentence.  He said he was sending me to Southcrest Hospital in Tulsa where there was a specialist who would be better skilled to take the fluids needed for a biopsy.

That Thursday afternoon a couple of the elders from New Life Christian Church that I attended came in, laid hands on my abdomen, and prayed for healing.  Just after they left our new pastor, Rick Burke, came in and repeated the process.  On Friday morning I was transported by ambulance to Southcrest.  I was immediately taken for a CT scan.  I was taken to a room on the 11th floor and hooked up to IVs in both arms.  About 2:00 p.m. a doctor came in with a folder full of papers and a very worried look on his face that concerned me greatly.  He asked me if I knew why I was there and I told him what Dr. Korgan had told me.  He looked up from the folder and told me that the new scan showed nothing on my liver, no cysts, nothing unusual. 

This is proof to me that healing IS REAL, and this isn’t the end of the story.  The next morning another specialist came in, a woman doctor whose family had immigrated from India a couple of generations before.  She asked me about my comfort level, how I was feeling.  I told her I had some very minor pain in my back, more discomfort than pain really.  She said I had a bad case of pancreatitis, a condition that usually had people on pure morphine for pain but that I was on a very low dose of a very mild pain medication.  She was amazed at my pain level, or lack of pain.  I found out that two of the medications were very strong clot-busting medications. After having spent ten days in the Claremore hospital I was in Southcrest for 21 days on the clot busters to no avail.

A doctor came in on a Thursday afternoon and told me I was scheduled for surgery the next afternoon at 2:00 p.m. and that some radiology technicians would be in shortly to take me for another CT scan.  Several previous scans had shown no improvement in the size of the clot.  He told me they would make an eight-inch incision in my groin and reach in with a hand to remove the clot.  To say the least I was not looking forward to that.  The techs took me down for the scan and brought me back to the room about an hour later.  One of them told me nothing had changed in the three weeks I had been there.  That evening several people came in to lay hands on and pray for me.  The  elders and their wives came also and I had a steady parade of people praying for me for about an hour.  As the elders were leaving Rick met them at the elevators and after talking with them he came in and prayed for me.

About 11:00 Friday morning the radiology techs came in to take me for one more scan so the doctor could get a closer look to ensure that they had an exact location and status.  I got back to the room about 12:30 and ate lunch.  About 1:30 the surgeon came in with a strange look on his face and asked me if I was ready to go home.  I was stunned and told him what was planned for the afternoon.  That’s when I found out he was the surgeon scheduled to do the surgery.  He said the scan that morning showed a 95% reduction in the clot, that my wife was on the way to pick me up and he would schedule a home health group to administer further clot-busting medication on an in-home basis.   

A few days later a home health nurse came to the house with a hospital IV pump on a roller stand just like the one I was hooked up to in the hospital and a box of modules with the medication in them.  He showed my wife and me how to connect the machine to the “pic line” in my right armpit region, how to install the med module and turn on the machine.  The process to administer the medication took 30 minutes.  I had to do this three times a week for about six months at which time a scan showed the clot was gone.

This experience totally validates the healing spoken of in the Holy Bible and gives me the confidence to hold on to the dreams I have had of healing.  The day of the night I had the first dream I was reading in the Bible where it said, “Young men will have visions and old men will dream dreams.”  I see that as more validation of my faith that the dreams were indeed promises from God that He would restore me.  Abraham waited 25 years for his dream to happen, Jesus waited 30 years for His ministry to start, the man at Solomon’s Porch waited 38 years for his healing, Moses waited 40 years to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt, and the woman with the issue of blood had been in her condition for 12 years when she was healed.  I don’t know how long I will have to wait, and while I hope it isn’t much longer I will wait as long as it takes.  God has a plan and His will and His plan for me is much better than anything I can concoct.  He has seen the end result already.

Faith WORKS, not necessarily in the preferred time frame or way I might expect, but it works.  I pray every day asking God to let the next morning be the one I dreamed of but that His will is more important than mine, and I WILL NOT give up no matter how long it takes.  Every morning satan hits me with taunts because my prayer hasn’t been answered.  I tell him, “Not yet, but it will happen.”  The first thought I remember having after the stroke was that this would not define me, that I would recover and live a normal life again.  This was while I was in the nursing home trying my best to learn to walk again.  After nine years, two months, and 13 days I still believe I, and everyone else, will see the restoration I dreamed about.  It is when, not if.

I submit this in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, in faith, with the responsibility given to me by Almighty God to honor His work and not let it die from neglect.