The Word Guild: surgery

Showing posts with label surgery. Show all posts

Thursday, April 09, 2015

Restoring Health through Medicine and Prayer -HIRD

By the Rev. Dr. Ed Hird

In December 1980, I lost my voice for eighteen months due to Spasmodic Dysphonia. My GP told me that I would never preach again. My father-in-law the Rev Dave Cline, at the time, was the Order of St Luke the Physician (OSL) Warden for BC and Yukon. Desperation led me to join OSL where I devoured every book that I could find on healing. I particularly appreciated the insights I gained from filling out the OSL study guide on Jesus’ healing miracles. Later I even became an OSL Chaplain. On May 25th 1982, I had successful throat surgery and was able to speak again. During the surgery, I had a twenty-four hour prayer vigil. Healing prayer and healing medicine belong together. Every three months, I have Botox treatments that help maintain my voice.

Every time I preach is a miracle. My goal is to be like the tenth leper who came back and gave thanks. During the eighteen months of voice loss, I read sixty books on speaking and writing. God birthed a passion for writing and communication during my darkest time. I realized that even without a voice, I still had much to say. My ‘voice’, particularly about healing and wholeness, was meant to be heard. Since that time, I have written over four hundred and fifty newspaper articles and have recently published my sequel book ‘Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit’ on Titus. Many people don’t realize that the book of Titus is Paul’s health instruction manual to unhealthy pirates. The book of Titus gives us the keys to healthy churches, healthy families and healthy lives. Paul’s key emphasis to Titus again and again was holistic health/soundness: healthy faith, healthy doctrine, healthy love, and healthy endurance. Health for Paul was not just physical. Paul insisted on health in every area of Titus’s life as he impacted the Cretans. The very Greek word for both health and soundness is ‘hygiaino’ ὑγιαίνω from which we get the modern term ‘hygiene’. Many people do not realize that soundness and health are the same biblical concept. When a heart is healthy, the doctor says that it is sound. The book of Titus was not merely about healthy/sound doctrine. Health for Paul was holistic, embracing our whole life in body, mind and spirit.

Over the years, I learned that the healing ministry needs to be integrated into regular Sunday morning worship, not just put in a midweek corner for the few. I will never forget the night that Lee Grady, former Editor of Charisma Magazine, prophesied about St. Simon’s North Vancouver being a well-spring of healing with healing teams being raised up for body, soul and spirit restoration. Every worship service at St. Simon’s, whether traditional or contemporary, has a team ready to pray for healing. Keith Bird, OSL Canada editor, said that Restoring Health “presents to us ‘modern-day pirates’ a challenge for becoming whole in body, mind and spirit. I didn’t want to put it down.” Imagine how wellsprings of holistic healing, Titus communities throughout Canada, might revolutionize our toxic Canadian pirate culture.

The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, Rector
http://edhird.com

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver
http://stsimonschurch.ca

-an article for the December issue of the Order of St Luke the Physician Canada newsletter ‘The Canadian Healer’.

Saturday, October 11, 2014

Thanks Giving—Carolyn R. Wilker

When was the last time you were told to give thanks? Could you do it when you’re going through some challenging times?

I’ve struggled with this countless times, because, being human, I can always think of the negative and struggle to find the positive. In 1 Thessalonians 5:18, I read, “Rejoice always, pray continuously, give thanks in all circumstances.” I struggle with that, even when there’s good stuff happening in the middle of overwhelming tension, and I anticipate and await the outcome or the next big thing, just as in our recent experience.

Recently, my husband had surgery in Toronto. It’s not my favourite place to drive. There are so many cars and people to watch for. Streetcars picking up and letting off passengers. Construction and too many one-way streets. Driving in a city often does make it more familiar, not that I want to do it frequently. Then the interweaving of highways to get there that my husband calls ‘spaghetti junctions.’ He couldn’t have phrased it better.

One needs to have wits about them to drive there. A carefully programmed GPS helps a great deal. My head filled with directions and I still had to pay heed to everything around me. Focus, focus. It’s just like my mother often said of parenting young children, “You need eyes in the back of your head.” I agree.

We made it, with the help of our GPS, Matilda, and my husband checked in for his surgery the next morning, with me there holding the bag of items he would need after surgery. The wait during surgery seemed long, and fortunately, with no undue surprises—always longer because it’s waiting time. And it’s not just the bag of stuff I was carrying; it was also the collection of hopes and concerns of how the surgery would help.

Post-surgery, my husband faced discomfort of grafts, stitches and swelling, and for me, it included anticipating the healing and the arms-length of instructions and details for recovery—read, high maintenance—for the next week.

Having made it through the surgery, two drives there and back in a short week and a half, and in spite of anxiety, there were good things: plenty of prayers, my trusty GPS to guide me safely through the maze of highways that surprisingly was now becoming more familiar, not meaning I want to drive it often.

Because this is Thanksgiving weekend, I will offer my thanks in the middle of all this commotion and the medical procedures.

For a large hospital, with a solid record

For medical specialists, whose education is used to heal and help, and the assurance that we’re in the best of hands

For nurses with a sense of humour as they go about their work

For the taxi driver who cared about what’s happened in my day

For the bed and breakfast owner who cared about our journey and provided a hearty breakfast for me

For a safe place to lay my head at night, even when my sleep is restless

For conversation with others who are also waiting while a loved one is in surgery

For such things as a GPS that helps us to get safely from one place to another

For a progressing recovery and antibiotics that support healing

For innovations that help patients to better handle conditions

And here I give thanks for the gifts God gives to us: friends and family, grace, forgiveness and the chance to start over each new day because of our hope in Jesus, our Saviour.

Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving, or at least a grateful one in whatever you face today.

Carolyn R. Wilker, editor, storyteller and author of Once Upon a Sandbox

www.carolynwilker.ca

Thursday, October 09, 2014

Eyes to See -HIRD

By the Rev. Dr. Ed Hird

Recently my eye surgeon Dr. Kirker had me lie face down for three days. I had just had laser eye surgery for a microscopic macular hole. This condition was not noticeable until I was out at UBC reading tiny 19^th century print. Upon going to an eye specialist, I discovered that I did not have either lense correction, cataracts, glaucoma, retinal detachment or macular degeneration. Over time, the gel or vitreous in our eyes shrink and detaches from the retina. In rare cases, it sticks and causes a microscopic hole. Before 1970, they could not do anything about this. After laser surgery, the surgeon filled my right eye with gas which temporarily held everything in place. In order for the gas to do its job, I had to be vertical for 90% of the time. Fortunately I was able to rent a massage desk and full-body massage pillow. Sleeping facedown for four nights was a brand new experience for me. My wife Janice said that I didn’t snore at all. I never hear myself snore.

Lying face down prohibited me from watching TV or checking my computer. Because our North Vancouver Library system has a large assortment of talking books, I was able listen to John Grisham, Louis Lamour, and Elie Wiesel. All three authors were passionate about justice. Grisham sought justice in the court room. Lamour sought justice at the end of a gun. Elie Wiesel sought justice from God and neighbour.

Lying on my face enabled me to listen to Elie Wiesel’s trilogy: Night, Dawn, and Day. Each of the trilogy was deeply moving and disturbing. Like my successful laser surgery, Elie’s trilogy gave me eyes to see what I had been previously somewhat blinded to. As a holocaust survivor, Wiesel has written over 50 books interpreting the meaning of the Holocaust for our modern age. Wiesel miraculously survived the Concentration camps when so many of his family and friends ended in Hitler’s ovens. In his receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, they said of Wiesel: “From the abyss of the death camps, he has come as a messenger to humanity – not with a message of hate and revenge but with one of brotherhood and atonement.”

Too many people in our culture have either never heard of or hardened their hearts to the message of the Holocaust. It seems to some like water under the bridge, as ancient history. Wiesel’s book help us to enter into the story of the Holocaust as if for the first time. As a vivid story teller, Wiesel makes you feel that you were right there in the midst of the great tragedy. Would it be possible for Wiesel’s books to be included in our school systems as a way of reducing hatred and anti-Semitism? It could give our young people new eyes to see what it is liked to be bullied and rejected.

It is too easy to scapegoat other people and blame them for the problems in our lives. Racism seems to be deep in many of our cultures. It dies a hard death. Without regular self-examination and repentance, racism can easily slip back into our hearts. Anti-Semitism has proven in the past century to be one of the deadliest forms of racism. Jewish people have suffered deeply again and again through pogroms, inquisitions, and job discrimination. When conflict arises in the world, anti-Semitism and racism seem to spike. What would it take for us to truly forgive and love those who offend us, those who are different?

Chronic and acute anxiety push us in the direction of requiring that everyone act and smell just like us. Elie Wiesel’s writings encourage us to celebrate differences and uniquenesses of other neighbours. Jesus quoted Leviticus in commanding us to love our neighbour as ourselves. Love is always the answer. Love gives us eyes to see when we are blind. Love is an expression of amazing grace, where I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see. My prayer for those reading this article is that God will give us eyes to see that other neighbours are just as human, as valuable and as sacred as we are.

The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, Rector

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission in Canada

http://stsimonschurch.ca