Indeliblog

So it is Saturday August 1st and I am sitting with my wife in a hospital room at Vanderbilt. We have been here at the hospital since Monday morning when we came to the ER to check out her fever and weird combination of other symptoms. It all began almost 2 weeks ago when Wendy noticed a painful and swollen lymph node in her left leg. She went to her doctor who didn’t really know what to make of it. Perhaps she strained something doing zumba the doctor said. Two days later, around 3:30pm intense chills and body aches took over Wendy and a sudden fever (103) came upon her. During the rest of that week, she continued to spike fevers as high as 104.5 alternating with a low grade fever every 4 hours or so. Now we love that TLC show “Mystery Diagnosis” but it’s a whole different ball game when its happening to you, or your wife. As the week went on other weird symptoms developed. By Sunday night (a week after the initial swollen node) she had been put on two antibiotics, tests had been sent out for various tick born diseases etc. She continued to have the fevers, but now she had terrible headaches, swollen knees so bad she could hardly walk, and a rash. So we came to the ER and by the end of the day, still having no idea what was wrong with her, they admitted her for a “fever of unknown origin.” They ran all kinds of tests, my poor wife felt like a pin cushion, she endured several blown iv’s - finally ending up with one in her “vampire vein” in her neck. We had all kinds of specialists come in to consult on her case: infectious disease specialists looking for west nile and other tick and mosquito born viruses, rheumatologists considering lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and even Still’s Disease, and hematologists looking into lymphoma. By Thursday Wendy had been sick for over ten days and we still didn’t have any clear answers on what was going on. There seemed to be no potential diagnosis that could bring together all of her symptoms. She did indeed have meningitis - as they discovered when they did a spinal tap (not something you want to endure) and found her spinal fluid pressure was too high and she had an elevated white cell count in her spinal fluid. They had drained some of her spinal fluid on Wednesday, and her headaches were beginning to subside on Thursday, but still so many questions remained. What was wrong? We didn’t know, and neither did our team of excellent doctors - and we have nothing but praise for Vanderbilt University Medical Center and all of our doctors.

As were sitting in our hospital room that Thursday I decided I needed to listen back to the tracks from our new Indelible Grace Acoustic project I have been working on this summer. I was listening on a little boom box I had brought along, and jotting down notes for editing that still needed to be done, but my wife was listening. When I looked up, I noticed tears in her eyes. The first song, By Thy Mercy (words by James Cummins with a great new tune by Greg Thompson) seemed to put the words in our mouth that we didn’t know how to cry.

1. Jesus, Lord of life and glory, bend from heaven thy gracious ear;
While our waiting souls adore thee, friend of helpless sinners, hear:
From the depth of nature’s blindness, from the hardening power of sin,
From all malice and unkindness, from the pride that lurks within,

Refrain: By thy mercy, O deliver us, good Lord, good Lord

2. When temptation sorely presses, in the day of Satan’s power,
In our times of deep distresses, in each dark and trying hour,
When the world around is smiling, in the time of wealth and ease,
Earthly joys our hearts beguiling, in the day of health and peace,

Refrain: By thy mercy, O deliver us, good Lord, good Lord

The last verse really hit home:

3. In the weary hours of sickness, in the times of grief and pain,
When we feel our mortal weakness, when all human help is vain,
In the solemn hour of dying, in the awful judgment day,
May our souls, on thee relying, find thee still our Rock and Stay;

It is fascinating how often when we think we are making a CD for others we find that the Lord wants to use it to speak to us first. We are grateful for God’s goodness and for His healing mercy.

By the following day, Wendy began to make a turn and greatly improve. She is almost completely fine now - nothing left but the bruises from all the needle sticks, a slight headache, and a little bit of swelling and stiiffness in her knees. The doctors still aren’t sure what hit her. Was it some unknown virus? Was it some auto-immune thing? (Seems the most likely answer is some combination of these two.) But whatever it was, not only are we grateful for the healing God has brought to Wendy, but also for the reminder of who He is, our Good and Merciful God.