Grief and Hope

These last 2 weeks I feel like I've seen a lot of grief pass through our doors at the eye clinic. This is a little 15 month old girl with an eye tumor called retinoblastoma. She's just crying here because she's in the doctor's office, but when she's outside, she plays and eats and sleeps like a normal kid, and doesn't seem to be in pain. Unfortunately, this tumor is already so large that it is surely already metastasized to other parts of her body and is also in her brain. One of the hardest things in her case is that her mother is dead and her father is unknown, so her aunt brought her in....If this tumor had been found earlier, her life might have been spared. As it is, she will likely only live another 2-3 months.

In deciding whether to operate to remove the bulk of the tumor, I prayed, and talked with 4 different physicians with experience in this surgery. It's called an exenteration, and calls for removing the affected eye and all the tissue around and behind the eye, all the way back and down to bare bone. It's a huge, disfiguring operation with a high risk of lots of blood loss and possibly death, and it would not prolong her lifespan because of the metastases that already exist. So we decided not to operate, and I hope it was the right decision. We prayed with the child's aunt before they left, and despite our sure hope of eternity, it was very hard to give them this news and send them on their way.

Yesterday in clinic I had two separate patients break into tears in the afternoon. The first one was an older lady who can only see a little bit of motion in her left eye, due to a mature cataract. Her other eye is better but already quite blurry from cataract, too. When she was told that our operating schedule is full until April 2010, she burst into tears and would not be consoled. Her daughter understood that cataracts aren't a medical emergency and that there are a lot of people in line ahead of her, but the patient explained that her husband died recently and life has just been so hard lately, and she travelled 2 days to get here....I ended up adding her on as an extra case 2 weeks from now, as my heart just couldn't take it.

The other patient was a father around 40 years old who has permanently lost all vision in his left eye due to glaucoma, an increase of the pressure inside the eye. That eye causes him a lot of pain, and the other eye is starting to have the same problem and needs surgery. He also travelled far to get here, and his responsibilities with his family make it hard for him to commit to taking care of the right eye, but if he doesn't he'll lose that one too.

We've already written about lots of patients who are overjoyed...yesterday, for instance, a couple of patients were radiantly happy after their cataract surgeries and told me repeatedly that we were going to have LOTS of people start coming here from Libreville, the capital (I didn't know whether to laugh with them or cry at this declaration)....But these are some of the stories of grief we hear too.
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This week God has encouraged me from the book of Romans in the Bible, chapter 15, verses 5-6 and 13:

"Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus, so that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ....Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."

I needed to hear every word in those verses. They told me that God was there for me, to give me perseverance, encouragement, unity with other believers, joy, and the peace that comes from restful confidence in Him - even when I feel inadequate and regardless of circumstances. God is there for us, for all these things, and so we have hope in every situation because of his unchanging character.