WRITTEN IN MY HEART
10) My Death to Life Experience – Part 2 – 2024
Upon arriving in ICU, November 14, 2001, work began to thicken my blood so that a CAT scan could be done. Many hours passed. Around 10 p.m., a CAT scan with dye was finally accomplished.
The preliminary diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. The doctors believed I was dying. They believed I only had two to three weeks left of earthly life.
Continuing now with Part 2.
A CAT scan guided biopsy was scheduled for 4 p.m. on November 15. I was calm and ready to face whatever the results were to be. My pastor arrived shortly before I was taken to the CAT scan room. His presence and praying with me were certainly orchestrated by God and just what was needed.
Arriving in the CAT scan room, I was not afraid. The doctor talked with me and referred to a lesion involving the adrenal gland that they were going to snip tissue samples from. What he was telling me sounded different from what a young student doctor blurted out early that morning. As they worked on me, I could hear in the background talk about the samples they were getting being made up of blood and not tissue. At the end of the biopsy, the doctor told me it was possible these masses were from blood hemorrhages and were not tumors.
Wow, awesome, what a difference 12 hours made. I went from a pronouncement of inescapable death to a pronouncement of LIFE. This whole experience was about the shedding of blood.
The final biopsy results, which were brought to me two days later, seemed to confirm that what I had experienced was a rupture resulting in an internal bleed. The multiple masses floating inside my body cavity were coagulated blood and not cancerous tumors. In three days I went from a pronouncement of death to a newness of LIFE.
This whole experience revolved around the shedding of blood! Jesus did not cause the internal bleed, but He definitely had warned me and used the experience for good.
I am still in awe that Jesus allowed me to share in this painful way a taste of His suffering on the cross. The pain I experienced in the very center of my left foot. Two days later, the pain in the very center of my left hand. This experience reminding me of nails being driven into Jesus hands and feet. The following Wednesday, November 14, the piercing pain in my left side, reminding me of how Jesus was pierced with a sword.
An important message that can be shared with this experience is the understanding that in order to be a follower of Jesus Christ one must die to self and to sin and grab hold of the awesomeness of the righteousness of Jesus.
It had taken several hours before I was moved from ICU to a room. I found out later that I had been assigned a single room in an area where the patients were NOT expected to go home. I WAS RELEASED from the hospital late Saturday afternoon, November 17th, 2001. A number of the nursing staff clapped as I left the room I had been assigned to.
On Monday, I went in to see the new family doctor who had conducted a physical on me in October at a Mankato, MN clinic. The primary purpose was to set up an appointment for a CAT scan to be done within two weeks of the hospital discharge date.
Following are some of my reactions to my visit with the doctor in Mankato. As I entered the examining room, I felt like I had entered Satan’s den. The nurse kept saying the name Jesus over and over again in a very irreverent manner. I was struggling with this and about to ask her to quit taking the name of Jesus in vain when she stopped doing it.
Then, the doctor came in. His arrogance filled the room. Instead of asking how I was feeling and showing any signs of compassion, his first words were (paraphrased), “you are going to have to decide whether or not I am to be your doctor.” Basically, he was upset because instead of making arrangements to be driven to Mankato when I was experiencing the piercing pain in my left side, I agreed to be driven to the local clinic in the town where I lived. As I tried to relate what had happened and the results of the biopsy, he began to insist that one of the masses be removed just to be sure I did not have cancer.
As I left his office, I really questioned whether or not I could ever go back there again. However, an appointment for a CAT scan did get set up.
I will share the conclusion to this experience in my post next week.
Personal Testimony of
Dorothy von Lehe
2024 part 2 of 3