Never Forsaken: Riding the Crazy Train

 

Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord had commanded. He raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials and struck the water of the Nile, and all the water was changed into blood.  Exodus 7:20

 In February of 2023, I was in a desperate place. I had dealt with migraines for years, but they were getting ridiculous. I got regular migraines, a few a month, but Starting February 21^st of 2021 I had a migraine that lasted over a month. This was terrible, I cannot tell you how awful it was because unless you have experienced something like a migraine and had it last for days and weeks on end you can’t begin to imagine it. But then, in 2022, it was even worse. Around the same time of year, I got another migraine that decided to hold on. And it held on, and it held on, and it held on. I tried a myriad of different medicines. I went all the way to Seattle multiple times a week for migraine infusions. I lived in the dark, with the lights dimmed and the curtains drawn. Pain was my constant companion. When it finally lifted in June, It became super important to me to not have it happen again. 

 I had finally gotten into the UW Headache clinic. After six months of waiting, I got in to see the specialist, well, sort of. You see, since COVID they had switched their practice to only being online, so I “saw” her virtually. This may have been the least satisfying doctor’s appointment I’ve had. I had anticipated so much, but when it actually came, the ten virtual minutes I spent with her were filled with her flying through a PowerPoint presentation at lightning speed, throwing information about migraines and medications and treatments at me as if through a fire hose, followed by “Any questions?” and as I sat there with my mouth agape, still in the ravages of a migraine that had lasted for a month at this point but had two more months to go, I couldn’t grasp anything she had shared, let alone been able to formulate a question about it, so the appointment was over. She told me to stop taking the medicines that had offered me some relief because they were prone to rebound headaches, which in hindsight was likely what I was experiencing, at least initially. She told me to take different medicines, which did nothing for me, and then I was given a follow-up appointment six months later with her physician’s assistant. I never did see her again. At the followup, the result was fairly similar, “Oh, those medications didn’t work? Here, try these.” Which, of course, didn’t end up working either. 

 When January of 2023 rolled around and I had my next follow-up, I was done. I didn’t want to walk away from this appointment with yet another worthless prescription. We HAD to figure out why I was getting these headaches in the first place. The PA had little hope to offer but said at some point we could consider imaging. I’d had many MRIs by this point, so that didn’t phase me at all, and I knew my insurance would approve it since they had regularly so far. She said we could wait six more months and if it didn’t get better do it then, but I knew that my “migraine season” was approaching and I wanted to get it done sooner rather than later. So she agreed to put in the order. 

 We were planning a big anniversary trip in February, our 25^th anniversary in fact, and so I scheduled the MRI for the Friday after we returned. The following Monday, at six in the evening- so after office hours, I got a surprise call from the PA. She has a thick accent, which I really struggle to understand in general, but especially on the phone. I closed my eyes and focused and did all the things I could, praying that God would help me understand the information she was sharing. What I gathered was that they had found something on my imaging – I think she called it a lesion, but I had only heard of lesions as being sores on your skin, so I was really confused by that. The only technical information I took away from the call was the word “Sub Ependymoma”. That was something I could Google, and Google I did. Turns out, a Sub Ependymoma is a brain tumor. She had called to tell me I had a brain tumor. Whoa. What do you do with that? I had been left with a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” directive and I sat in my bedroom, completely at a loss. The thing I had fought for, that I had finally thought might help me, gave me the worst news I could imagine.

 What does all this have to do with our verse today? Well, I got into the mindset of the Israelites this morning. Their situation had gone from bad, to worse, to intolerable. Then Moses had shown up with promises to go to Pharaoh and get him to let them go. Hope was on the horizon! Instead, though, they were told that they would have to continue meeting their quota of bricks but do it while having to gather the straw to make them themselves. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the next time Moses went to Pharaoh he turned all the water into blood. Now the people had to essentially dig wells to get the water they needed to survive, on top of gathering straw to make an unending number of bricks. This was getting ridiculous! Somone had to stop this Moses guy! Really, it’s amazing that he wasn’t lynched.

Here’s the Thing: You know this story, and if you don’t go look it up in the book of Exodus. It’s a really good one. But imagine living it. Imagine being at this point in the story when everything looks worse and worse and worse. I can imagine it, because I’ve been there myself. And you know what, in my story, just like with the Israelites, it didn’t get better anytime soon. The train just kept heading down the track through the dark tunnel which seemed to be leading straight to the pit of hell. How do you hold on when life seems this ridiculously impossible? Faith. Straight up, that’s all you can do. Hope in God is the only hope that can get you through. I highly recommend you establish it before life puts you on the crazy train!