Summer is calling!

School is out for the summer!

The final school bell rang signaling the end of Christopher's junior year in high school and the beginning of summer vacation.  The next few months would be filled with warm weather, backyard BBQs, and lots of time out on the water in the wakeboard boat.  During the warm months, Christopher becomes part fish.  He loves every water sport ever invented. Boating, swimming, surfing, jet skiing and wakeboarding are all on his list of fun things to do in order to beat the heat.  Wakeboarding is a particular passion.  Christopher has spent many long summer days practicing his technique and learning new tricks. 



Ride the wake!

The only thing standing in between Christopher and his wakeboard was two leaky holes.  Open holes in the abdomen and river water just don't mix well together.  One quick dip in the Willamette River could result in weeks of antibiotics, but now that school was out all Christopher could hear was his wakeboard calling him.  All hope of the holes closing up on their own had been thrown out the window. Christopher just wanted to get these holes stitched up... and fast!  After all, summer wasn't going to last forever especially in Oregon. 

The surgery was still a couple of weeks away, but two weeks might as well have been two years as far as Christopher was concerned.  That last week in June just couldn't come soon enough.  We tried to reschedule the surgery for an earlier date, but there weren't any other dates available.  June 28th would just have to do.  He resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn't be able to "jump the wake" until mid-July.


I'd rather be boating!

His attitude towards the leaking holes was becoming hostile.  The leaks did more than just irritate the skin around the still healing holes.  Christopher was IRRITATED and at his wits end about the whole thing.  He had gone through boxes of gauze and literally yards of Coban.  His frustration translated into a slight weight loss since he equated eating with increased leakage. 

I tried to remind him (and myself) about the fact that God had blessed him with an instant healing miracle.  His GI tract had been healed, and after 16 years of getting nutrition from a tube he was now able to eat real food from a fork.  I encouraged him (and myself) to concentrate on the incredible merciful healing that God had done in him.  He understood intellectually with his head, but his heart was longing to ride the waves on his wakeboard.  It's next to impossible to reason with the heart.  The heart "wants what it wants," and those holes were just getting in the way.  He wanted them gone.  I think that if I would have let him, he might have actually stitched them up all by himself.  I would spend the next couple of week trying to boost his spirits and hiding my sewing needles.


When the date on the calendar finally revealed the day of the pre-op appointment with the surgeon, we both breathed a sigh of relief.  On June 26th we met with the surgeon at her office, so that she could examine Christopher, and we could go over the details of the surgery.

Christopher lay on his back on the examination table, the white paper crunching each time he moved.   The surgeon began the routine of poking and prodding around his abdomen and then announced her surgical plan.  The surgery would be a fairly simple one.  She would simply go into the holes, open them all the way up, clean them out, and sew them back up from the inside out.  There would be layers of stitches that would dissolve over time.  The surgery would take around an hour or so, and Christopher could go home later that night. 

Surgery day!

It all sounded simple enough, but experience had taught me that often these things look simple on paper, but tend to be much more complicated in reality.  Trying to push that thought out of my mind, I listened to the pre-op instructions.  The surgeon reminded us that Christopher was to have NO food or drink after midnight, and that he was to be at the hospital by 9:00 a.m. 

We left the surgeon's office feeling great anticipation.  We were so close to all of this finally being over.  In a couple of days the surgery would be done, and the holes would be closed.  Chronic illness and feeding tubes would become a thing of the past, nothing but a distant memory.  Christopher's future would be full...full of nothing but good food!

If you have never accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you can pray like this:

More Tomorrow...