“I need to go home now,” I said.

“Now? In the middle of dinner?”

“Yes, my stomach is killing me,” I said, as I clenched it under the table. I walked out of the restaurant holding my stomach, reclined the seat of the truck and laid there.

Later, after getting home, I rolled from side to side on the living room floor in pain. I take care of my mom who has Parkinson’s disease (she has lots of physical problems but is completely “with it”). She saw me lying there and said, “Pam what is wrong with you?”

“I don’t know. My stomach hurts really bad.”

“You’d better go to Immediate Care or the ER.”

“I’m not going,” I said. “It’s probably the flu or something.”

Over the next month, my stomach pains continued. I went to work every day and often wore my lab coat over my usual clothes, with my pants loosened. When I walked, I constantly wanted to lean forward from the pain. During lunch, I often laid down on a mat table in one of the treatment rooms and shut the door.

Eventually, I realized this stomach issue wasn’t relenting so I knocked on the office door of a doctor I knew at the hospital I worked at.

“Do I have the flu?” I asked, “My stomach pain has been going on for almost a month. I have sores in my mouth too, and I've never had those.”

“Honey, you don’t have the flu,” the doctor said. “Go up to the GI clinic and have them look at you.”

I went upstairs to the clinic and made the earliest appointment I could get with a gastroenterologist in two days. That night, after getting home, I couldn’t stand the pain again and ended up in the ER. After sitting there all night, they finally did a CAT scan of my abdomen and put me on morphine. Of course, the morphine helped the pain, but I felt quite woozy. By the next day it had worn off and the pain returned.

Within a few weeks, after many more tests, my GI doctor confirmed the diagnosis of Crohn’s disease, ileocolitis.

“How can I have that?” I said. “I thought people get Crohn’s when they are eighteen or nineteen?”

“You can get it at any time in your life, Pam,” the doctor said. “I have one patient who is eighty-three and just diagnosed with it.”

“What can I do for it? When will it go away?”

“Pills,” she said.

“For how long?”

“The rest of your life, people do not get off them. It’s a chronic condition—an autoimmune disorder and systemic, that's why you have the mouth sores. Once you start taking the medication, it should help soon. You cannot go off the pills, it could cause very serious problems.”

Could she tell me anything worse, I thought as I made my way out of the building and cried in my car. And it doesn’t go away, the rest of my life? I started envisioning surgeries, a colostomy bag, and all the bad things that could potentially happen.

I filled the prescription for the medication. Within a week, after taking Pentasa 500 mg, eight pills a day, I felt great, pain-free, like in Heaven. Back to myself—almost. Three months later though, the pains started returning again severely. I felt no relief. They put me on another drug that’s used for chemotherapy patients.

In the meantime, I decided to go with the women’s ministry of my church on a missions trip to Costa Rica. No sense in sitting around all the time, I thought, just being sick.

The trip was great, but my health was an issue. I had to lay down a lot and the 5-HTP was making me feel very sick. I took heavier doses of pain pills which helped a little, but those wore off too.

When I got back to Buffalo, I started going to support group meetings for Crohn’s. There wasn’t much to change in my diet other than going from skim to almond milk and I tried to eat slower, which was difficult for me as I’m generally a fast paced person. My doctor explained I had pockets in the intestines and if you eat too quickly, the food would get almost stuck, like in a narrow funnel. Many foods could make my pain worse, especially raw vegetables and green salads, which I always liked. Although my weight didn't change much, I became anemic (low red blood cells) despite iron supplements. Since I couldn't eat green leafy vegetables to help my anemia and I ate a lot of mashed potatoes, I thought why not steak! The doctor got a kick out of how I improved my lab values by eating one or two steaks every day.

Despite the mild dietary changes I made, the years were challenging, health wise. I often felt like I had cancer. I barely made it through work and sometimes went home sick. Even when I got home, I’d lay on the couch or the carpeted floor with clutching my stomach in agony. The only thing that really helped was lying still and not eating anything to rest my insides, but this took hours—sometimes up to eight to ten hours. I tried multiple suggestions such as peppermint tea, ginger, and rubbing peppermint oil on my stomach, but any improvement was very short-lived.

My social life definitely changed. I couldn’t make a lot of events or I would get there and leave because I didn’t feel well. I remember going to a friend’s wedding and having such unbearable pain, I spent most of the evening in the car with the seat reclined trying to get my pain to calm down. The doctor said I could try other medications, but after going to the support groups and hearing the side effects and the stories of multiple surgeries, it scared me. So I just kept taking the current regimen. During this time, thankfully I had close friends and my church that prayed for me, and my family who encouraged me.

Stress could make my pain worse, but I found laughter did help somewhat. You can't tell someone having a heart attack, “Just laugh and everything will go away.” However, since my pain was generally constant and not an emergency, telling jokes and having fun especially when the pain was not too acute, helped. I often think of the verse, “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones,” Proverbs 17:22. There's a lot of wisdom there.

In January, I decided to work on another problem. My back and right leg had bothered me for some time due to a lumbar disc bulge or herniation. I had many of those in the past, but they’d always healed. This disc problem didn’t seem to want to change despite the many, many physical therapy exercises I did and going to a chiropractor multiple times. Most of the time, however the stomach pain outweighed the back and leg pain, so I didn’t focus on it.

On a Monday night, I volunteered my physical therapy services at Good Neighbors Health Care, an outreach center on the east side of Buffalo which offers free medical care to the community. The doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel always pray for the patients prior to the start of treatments. I asked if they could pray for my back and leg as it bothered me a lot that evening. I told them how I had tried nearly everything I could think of—physical therapy, chiropractic care, going to the gym, the pool, medications, and definitely prayer.

One of the doctors asked if I had tried acupuncture. “No,” I said, “Maybe I will try that.”

I looked up a man’s name on the internet that the doctor mentioned he heard did acupuncture. I decided I didn’t want to go to him. He had a lot of New Age philosophies, and I don’t believe that way. I then researched acupuncture on the Christian apologetic websites, to see if getting acupuncture would in any way violate my conscience as a believer in Christ. Acupuncture can help certain painful conditions and has rational scientific evidence for it. However, it’s extremely important that the practitioner you choose doesn’t try to influence you into the bondage of false Eastern religions. http://www.gotquestions.org/acupuncture-Christian.html

The following weekend, I had lunch with two friends from the Chapel, Sue and Ann. I told them about how the doctor from Good Neighbors thought acupuncture might help my back and leg symptoms.

“Why don’t you try going to John Wingfield?” Sue said. “He goes to our church, is a Christian and a nurse. He and his wife Stacy have gone on vacation with my husband and me; very nice man.”

I called John and went over to his house for a treatment the following weekend. Before I walked in, I prayed in my car, “Lord, if this treatment is not for me, make it very clear soon.”

John was quite thorough and detailed about how he does acupuncture. When John asked me my medical history, I told him about my Crohn’s disease and colitis. “Would you mind if I treat your stomach as well?” he asked.

“Go right ahead; use the biggest needles you have. I want everything gone.”

Twenty-eight needles later, I left. That week, I noticed something amazing. No stomach pain. My back and leg were the same though.

I called John, ecstatic. In the past year, every day I woke up I felt stomach pain, anywhere from mild to severe, while on pain medications. I was often in the bathroom sometimes ten times before walking out the door to go to work, and then I felt energy less. But after the prayer and treatment from John, I felt great, like I could walk on air.

The pain started coming back a little, so I went for two more sessions with John and he continued to pray to Jesus, do the acupuncture, and I continued feeling better.

Two months after the three treatments with John, I got the flu. It seemed strange. One week I felt sick, the next week, I’d feel fine. Yet, it continued. Several times after leaving work, I pulled over and threw up on the side of the road.

I finally left work one afternoon to see my primary doctor. “Pam,” my primary doctor said. “You can’t have the flu for a month.”

“Then why am I throwing up?” I asked.

“We will do CAT scan of abdomen,” he said in his Indian accent.

As I sat two hours waiting to have the test done, I looked through magazines and newspapers in the area as I hadn’t brought any reading material with me. I read the comics. One in particular stuck out to me. Family Circus showed a little boy praying with a caption, “How do I know God hears my prayers, when I just say ‘em in my head?”

Yes, I thought, that’s how I’ve sometimes felt these past two years since my diagnosis of Crohn’s. Many, many people including myself have prayed asking God to take this disease away and heal my intestines. God, are you listening? I knew He heard me and others’ prayers, yet no action. But today was different. I felt like God spoke to my heart at that moment—“this will happen.”

I wasn’t 100% sure if that was my imagination since I desperately wanted healing of my Crohn’s disease or truly the Holy Spirit. I cut the cartoon out of the newspaper and put it in my purse.

After the CAT scan, my primary doctor called me back into the office and said, “Pam, there is no evidence of Crohn’s, no scarring. I want you to go to another GI doctor.”

“That’s great news! I’m glad. I don’t know why I’ve been throwing up, but the pain from my Crohn’s has not been there.”

It took another month to see another GI doctor, Dr. Grant. I told him how my stomach had been feeling much better since January when I saw John who prayed for me and gave me three acupuncture treatments. I also told him the results of the recent CAT scan. Dr. Grant said he wasn’t so sure my diagnosis of Crohn’s was accurate. He planned on repeating all the tests and getting my previous tests and reexamining those. He told me it was my choice if I wanted to continue with my current meds or I could stop taking them. About two weeks later, I gradually went off the pills without any side effects.

After completing the tests, including a colonoscopy, I saw Dr. Grant again.

“Pam, I reviewed your previous tests, along with a top colleague of mine who I very much respect. We both agree, you definitely had Crohn’s Disease. When I saw the results of your recent tests, comparing them to the past ones, it was like looking at two different people. You have no evidence of Crohn’s disease or colitis anymore.”

“Wow, Dr. Grant, that’s great! Jesus does heal and He used John and everyone else, even you Dr. Grant.”

“I don’t know if He used me Pam.”

“I do, Dr. Grant, I believe.”

“Well, I’m going to order one more test, to see if you have any evidence of irritable bowel syndrome. You did fail the hydrogen breath test, and if you want, I can put you on a short course of antibiotics.”

“Sure go ahead. I’m just so glad, as this has been an extremely tough experience.”

Upon leaving the doctor’s office, I started crying for much of the evening and next morning. These were tears of joy this time. God did hear my prayers. I thought of how over the years, each time I saw my original GI doctor, she would tell me this disease would never go away. My response was always the same. “I respect you as a doctor, but…if God wants to heal me and give me a miracle He will.”

It’s always His choice whether He ultimately heals people as we often don’t understand when He doesn’t. No matter how much medical care and responsibility we take for trying to do all the “right” things, the final outcome is in His hands. It’s His will be done, as the Lord’s Prayer says.

It’s easy to trust when things are going great, but when they aren’t, I too, have wondered, “Don’t you care God?” But I know from reading the Bible and the many stories of people who’ve gone through much worse ordeals than I have, that He is doing something by allowing the troubles. Strengthening our character, bringing others to Him through how we handle our problems, relying on Christ more. There could be a host of reasons, which I may never find out until Heaven.

I know at times, I wasn’t proud of how I acted. Sometimes, I prayed, “God, would you just take me now. I’m ready to go to Heaven to be with you. I can’t take this anymore.” Oh, I would never act upon that thought myself, but the feeling of wanting to leave this earth and go to Heaven definitely occurred during some of the extremely painful episodes.

When I read the Biblical story of the death of Lazarus, Martha and Mary’s brother in John 11, I notice immediately that before Jesus raised their brother from the dead, He waited four days. I can imagine the joy Martha and Mary had upon seeing their brother alive on earth again. But I wondered why Jesus waited four days. I mean, He is God, He could have easily gotten there quicker, but He chose not to. He let Martha and Mary grieve over Lazarus during that time.

Again, because I’m not God, I don’t sometimes see the answer, but have to believe in faith that God loved them and wanted to help, however He chose to. He showed that He is in control of the timing of Lazarus living again on earth, and not Martha and Mary. When we can’t control circumstances, we have to trust God and His reasons for doing or not doing something even when we desperately cry out to Him. The results of praying to Jesus aren’t always like a microwave where we get the fastest results.

Ultimately, bringing Lazarus back from the dead, when He decided, brought the most glory to Christ. Oftentimes, trials involve suffering. “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us,” Romans 5:3-5.

We have today. I don’t know what the future holds or if my intestines will continue disease free; I pray they do. But as the saying goes, I do know who holds the future in His hands. It’s all about trusting in the King of glory—Jesus.

Addendum: a few years after being told of my no longer having Crohn’s and iliocolitis, my primary doctor ordered another colonoscopy due to some anemia issues I experienced (from female issues). Dr. Grant performed the procedure and remembered me from seeing him several years before.

He said afterwards, everything was fine and I didn’t need to return for another routine colonoscopy for ten years.

My friend Sue, who drove me to clinic for the test, later asked me when we she was driving me home.

“Do you know what you did in the recovery room?”

“No, what do you mean?”

“You grabbed a tract from your purse and started sharing the Gospel with the doctor.”

“I did?”

“Yes.”

“And what did he say?” I asked her.

“He was listening.”

I didn’t remember that at all, but I pray one day, Dr. Grant will know Jesus as His Savior.

Born again Christian that loves to inspire others to know the Lord, share the Gospel, and walk in faith. I'm a physical therapist and I take care of my ninety-three year old cute mom. I love teaching Bible studies, going on missions trips, exercising, and writing. Blog: joyluke157.wordpress.com