Post #3 -- The New Thing

 That fateful day in the trauma center was not much fun for that sad, old man.  Yet the discovery in those chest x-rays was even more disturbing!  Something new seemed to be on the horizon.  Maybe it’s my entrepreneurial wiring, but Isaiah 43:18-19 has always been intriguing to me — “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” (NIV) New things energize me.  I resonate with the challenge of new things thrust upon me.  Was this trauma center discovery truly another new thing?  If so, how will it affect my life? 

As the team of doctors pored over my chest x-rays counting my six cracked ribs they noticed something unusual in my lungs.  By the way, those  ribs were not just “cracked”; at least some of them were completely “broken”. When walking I could feel, and thought I could hear, them bumping against one another.  Anyway, those doctors noticed a “scarring” of some sort in my lungs and immediately set about to diagnose the problem.  The determination: Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) — “Idiopathic, meaning the cause is unknown; “Pulmonary” for lungs; and “Fibrosis” for “scarring, or “hardening” .  The internet quickly told me that Pulmonary Fibrosis is a lung disease that makes it difficult for the lungs to work as designed. Individuals with this disease have scarring in their lung tissue and inflammation in the air sacs inside their lungs. Over time, individuals develop shortness of breath that can interfere with their quality of life … and even threaten their life.

At the time, WebMD went on to loudly pronounced the patient’s longevity after an IPF diagnosis as “three to five years”.  Further, a local newspaper surfaced with a headline that seemed to loudly shout —  “Pulmonary Fibrosis worse than cancer —  with no known treatment”.  I don’t want to overdo all this or make a major deal out of this, but this kind of news is a bit traumatic.  What does one do with news like that?  All kinds of things run through a person’s mind.  That was 2011.  

During the immediate years that followed we prayed a lot, sought medical advice and eventually began taking a new medication that was finally approved by the FDA.  My breathing was becoming a bit more labored but life was still quite good.

About eight years into this journey,  I read of a man who studied the actuarial tables and determined by those actuarial standards how many days he had yet to live.  He then purchased a large glass jar and a number of marbles equal to the number of his remaining days and placed that glass jar with the marbles in his basement workroom.  Each morning thereafter he’d go down to his basement workroom and remove a marble from that glass jar, thank God for that marble, and ask God to help him use that day for His glory.  It did not take long for me to quickly observe that, in my eighth year of IPF (at the time), by this standard my glass jar had been empty for quite a while!  Even now most mornings I wake up thanking God for another “shiny new marble” and ask God to help me use it for His glory.  

It is now nearly twelve years into that journey and I’m still going strong.  Well maybe not as strong as 2011, but doing quite well given the diagnosis.  Admittedly the journey ahead is still very uncertain, but God is giving lots of reasons to keep going with gusto.  Keep watching as we uncover some of those reasons.