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Unbearable Pain Editor's Note: Let the Holy Spirit be your teacher. After you read these incredible stories of agony and rejection, ask yourself this: "Why would God allow one of His beloved suffer so?" "What lesson is there in these stories and the lives that were so dramatically touched?" Now, ask God the same questions, prayerfully, reverently - and hear the voice of the Holy Spirit in reply. The answers may surprise you! Be sure to also read the note at the end then read the telling story The Rock. Unbearable
Pain Note from the editor: Mary Mejia has told us that this man has been healed - prayer WORKS. The original message is over two years old! (Thank heavens we're DAING prayer requests now!) David Allen is a young missionary on the Chiang Mai,Thailand, mission team. He is critically ill with an unknown parasite and apparently will die within two months unless there is an intervention by the Lord. Please help create a global blanket of prayer for David, Michelle, and their four month old daughter, Brianna. {From: David Allen} My condition is quite serious now. The body is beginning to break down because I have no more fat or nutrient reserves. My diet consists mostly of vegetable broth, Gatorade, and saltine crackers. I tried homemade bread a few weeks ago, and ended up in the emergency room. I am in constant pain and have to take pain killers regularly. The severe diarrhea has continued for 7 weeks and I have been in the emergency room five times. In the last three days there have been sharp pains in both of my kidneys, so they are now running tests to see if my kidneys are infected. So far, eight doctors have not been able to diagnose the parasites. One lab in Dallas thought they had a positive diagnosis (a rare parasite called cryptosporidium), but the Public Health Center of Disease Control in Houston said it was an incorrect diagnosis. They have found two foreign agents, but no one has ever seen them before or can identify them. One is a parasite, and the other looks more like an amoeba. One of the effects of the parasites is to prevent my GI tract from absorbing nutrition.The CDC in Atlanta is 3-6 months behind, so they cannot help in time. My doctors are trying everyone else. They are in contact with one of the top infectious disease doctors in Thailand, and several of the experts here in the States. I believe that the pictures of the parasites are to be passed around until someone can identify them. I am not doing well. I feel like I am in a very dark valley right now. I have been praying for so long for help with no response, that I have become discouraged in prayer. This is a first for me in my life. Michelle and my parents are being a tremendous support for me, but they are having a hard time seeing me suffer so much. My prayers now are very elemental: "Father, save me!" But the pain continues each day,and I continue to lose weight. Please pray not only for my body, but for my spirit. I have not known fear like this before. I don't want to be fearful, and I don't need to be fearful because I am confident of my salvation. I think my fear is related more to the thought of not being with my wife and the new baby. This was the happiest time in my life before I became sick. David Allen We are encouraging everyone we know to lift up David and his family before the Lord of Lords. Please copy and send this message to those you think will join us in this global chain of prayer. Thanks,
Unbearable
Pain I am at this moment wondering how I can possibly put into words the story I must tell. It is a story too horrific and awful to be believed and yet I lived it, existed through it and by the grace of God - conquered it. In mid-February of 1994 I was sitting with a friend in the living room of my tiny apartment when suddenly instead of one of my friend, I saw two of her. When I ran and looked into the bathroom mirror, I saw two of myself as well. I had been visiting my doctor regularly and telling her of my intense dizziness. The last time I had seen her, I complained of dizziness and she exploded in rage and told me there was nothing she could do for me and what I really needed was to stop dwelling on my past, get over it, and stop feeling sorry for myself. This outburst seemed especially peculiar to me because I had never discussed my past with her at all, and she really didn't know me. Now, on this unseasonably warm February night, I was seeing double. This didn't frighten me because I was constantly taking antihistamines for what I thought were the worst sinus problems in the world. I thought my sinuses had gotten so bad they were causing double vision. I went to my job as a home health aide the next day still seeing everything in duplicate; but not overly concerned. But as the day wore on, driving from one patient's home to another became increasingly difficult. Late in the day I finally drove to the home office I worked from and presented my problem to the nurse in charge - in tears. I was already scheduled to be off work the next day because of my mother's hysterectomy in a local hospital, so we decided to ask a friend of mine to drive me to the hospital where my mom was. I would see the emergency room physician there and stay there with my mother overnight as originally planned. The emergency room physician was very thoughtful - he thought that I probably had a lazy eye problem and gave me a patch to wear over one eye but also scheduled an MRI of the brain a couple of days later. The MRI revealed a very large brain tumor between the pituitary gland and the optic nerve. By this time, the world had gone black because of the tumor's pressure on my optic nerve. I had fleeting vision for a second or two when I focused on someone so something. Then tiny black dots would rapidly form and seem to come together and grow into a huge black dot. Except for a second or two when I would first focus on something, I was blind. Emergency brain surgery for removal of the tumor at the University Hospital was a wonderful success. By the grace of God the tumor was actually a large cyst - non-malignant - and most of it was successfully removed. After five days of recuperation in the hospital, I went home to my mother's house and she cared for me. My post-operative check ups were good and I was scheduled to return to work in eight weeks. During this eight-week period I experienced total peace and felt healthier in my body than I had ever felt. I look back at those few days with such longing that the longing itself becomes almost physically painful. As soon as I returned to work I knew something was desperately wrong. I was exhausted and winded and weak as a lamb. My back began to ache and then to throb. I was constantly nauseated and dizzy. The pain increased and then seemed to spread from my back to my shoulders and down my arms into my trunk and down into my legs and feet. I would describe the level of pain I was in as post-surgical level pain. I was so weak that often as I was bathing and dressing my bedridden patients I would pray not to pass out on top of them. I was in trouble again and I knew it. I continued to drag myself to work day after day; but I was a walking dead person. I began to experience excruciating abdominal cramps and diarrhea that at first lasted only one hour a day and then three and then five. From this point on, I would have diarrhea five hours a day, every day, for the next two years. I worked on, somehow, through the summer months and into the fall. I desperately needed not to be working at this time - I was so very much more ill than most of my patients - but I was afraid of losing my health insurance if I quit. I knew that was one thing I had to keep if I had any hopes of getting medical help for this monstrous thing - whatever it was - that had taken a hold on me. I stopped sleeping completely in September of 1994. I was up all night, every night, but continued working until I collapsed from exhaustion and dehydration in December of 1994. During this entire time I had been going to doctors, one after the other, desperately trying to get help. But as blood and other tests revealed nothing I was repeatedly told by the doctors (usually angry with me) that the problem was mental illness instead of physical illness. I later found that one of the classic symptoms of my illness is panic attacks. I was and had been for a long time in a constant, never-ending panic attack - 24-hour a day variety. I never slept - but sometimes at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, I would dose off exhausted for an hour. Upon awakening, every morning at 6:00, the first thought that popped into my mind was "I am still in hell." My life had become a study in horror. Every morning the diarrhea would start and continue unabated for the next five hours. My muscles degenerated to the point that I sometimes could not feel myself. I just did not have the strength to lift a fork. Looking back at this experience now, I realize that God Himself carried me through this time and my strong belief in Him and His ultimate mercy toward people was the lifeline I held to in order to keep myself from committing suicide. If I had not had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ nothing would have kept me from ending my life. Finally, in September of 1995, I found myself at the Mayo Clinic. I was referred there by my trusted, childhood physician who scheduled me for complete evaluation and testing. At the Mayo Clinic I was almost instantly diagnosed with FMS - fibromyalgia syndrome - which destroys muscle strength causing excruciating, unbearable, all-over pain and thousands of young women (and some men) are bed-ridden by it every year. The longer it goes undiagnosed and untreated, the worse it becomes. There are medications that help tremendously, once the problem is properly diagnosed. Also, professional deep-muscle massages have been a Godsend for me and many other fibromyalgia sufferers. There is hope! If you are experiencing the type of pain I have described combined with diarrhea, panic attacks, nausea, afternoon fevers, exhaustion, and an inability to speak - ask your general practitioner to refer you to a rheumotologist at the Mayo Clinic to determine if you, too, suffer from FMS. Perhaps by reading my story, you will realize there is hope - that God really does care for you - and suicide is not the answer. Someday - a long time from now - we will meet in heaven. Postscript: I have included with this story of my experiences an account of an actual fibromyalgia attack that occurred in my home. It is not a description of a rare experience - this is the type of situation that constantly played out for the two years in which I could not receive medical help. "A First Person Account - A Day in the Life of a Person with FMS" September 20, 1995: I can't get my breath. I'm going to suffocate. When I try to lift my hairbrush, it feels like it weighs forty pounds. It is the heaviest thing I've ever picked up. I have only been out of the bathroom a few minutes. The bathroom - where I spend five hours a day, every day, in excruciating diarrhea. My scalp is on fire - it feels like hundreds of fire ants stinging me at once. Please God, please God, just let the itching stop! Please God - I can bear the rest of it somehow if You'll just make the itching stop! My mouth and throat are parched and my lips are cracked and blistered. I need to go into the kitchen and get some water but I don't have the strength to move - the kitchen seems a hundred miles away. Maybe in another time, another place, in another body, I could make it into the kitchen. But not today. I feel terror every second but every few seconds the terrorizing thought changes. What if my apartment catches fire? I don't know if I would have the strength to get out. What if I am mugged, robbed, raped? And terror number one - How am I going to get medical help? The doctors who could possibly help are unwilling to do so and the ones who would love to help me don't know what they're dealing with. Nothing shows up on any type of test - blood work and other tests show nothing. I have been written off by more doctors than I can bear to remember. I can feel the incredible pain explode in the back of my head and ricochet down my spine and outward from my spine into each limb all the way to the ends of my fingers and toes. I can feel myself falling to the floor in a convulsion of pain. As I lie on the floor, I am watching my own arms and legs twitch and jerk uncontrollably. I can actually see the muscles pulsating under my skin. I have lived like this for two years. Please Jesus, take me home. Please God let me die.
Unbearable
Pain .... And what of the pain in Littleton, Colorado? And what of the pain in your own life? The pain is real. The pain is deep. The pain can become all-consuming. The pain can make us angry, send us to the depths of disappear, cause us to act and speak in ways not our own. What of the pain?! I speak not from some ivory tower of comfort. No, not at all! Since I placed ionanet on the web as a ministry for Christ, I have endured pneumonia, meningitis and now a severe problem with my cervical spine which keeps me in grinding pain much of the time. I have also seen my husband's career trashed by false accusations concerning our web ministry, borne the rejection of friends who no longer speak to me because I refuse to take ionanet off the net... I, too, know pain... and it leads me to my most fervent prayers. Do not think me trite when I mention Job who suffered so many. many forms of pain. God placed Job's story before us with good reason. I am both comforted and chastened when I read it. God has a plan for my life, for yours, for every life. He knows of the pain and suffers with us. Pray! Ask for answers, expect them. Do not, however, expect them to be what your will dictates for even our Savior prayed, "...not my will but Thine be done." We need articles, poetry and
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