On the Way to Recovery

My appointment with my doctor after my MRI, which was painful beyond belief because of the position in which I had to lie, revealed a disk protrusion at L4-L5, directly above the site of my previous back surgery.  I was not happy to hear that.  It took me literally a year and a half to recover from surgery, and it was the most painful experience in my life.  For anyone who has had a slipped disk or other type of back injury, you have my sympathy.  Back problems affect your quality of life.  If your back hurts, you hurt; if a disk is slipped and pressing on the sciatic nerve, the pain is unbearable.  My doctor ordered a steroid injection at the site of the injury as the first attempt to fix it.  I had an injection with my first herniated disk and didn't know what to expect at the time, and I discovered that it is a very brief but painful procedure.  Having experienced it before, I knew what I was in for this time; I definitely wasn't looking forward to it.  I went in to the hospital this morning at 9:00, my scheduled time, for the procedure that took only a minute, but the preparation and paperwork to get me there was time-consuming.  My husband took me, and I thought we'd be out and back home by 10:15 or so, but it was 11:15 before we returned home.
Once I got past all the 'red tape', I was wheeled into a room where I stretched out on my stomach and bared my backside.  Once that was prepped and sterlized, the doctor injected the steroid, which felt like a flash of burning pain shooting down my right leg and into my foot.  There were 2 injections lasting approximately 3 seconds each, and I'm not embarrassed to say that I moaned (actually, it was more of a holler) with pain.  It felt like a stab in the back with a knife which was then dragged down my leg and into my foot, all in the matter of seconds. 
Thankfully, it's over, and I'm sitting typing this.  I won't know for several days if the steroid injection will have the desired affect, but I'm trusting God that it will be all that's needed to fix this problem.  Just the thought of going through another back surgery brings me to tears.
I won't be sitting outside later today as the heat is on here in North Carolina.  It's currently 90 degrees and is expected to go a few degrees higher, and ditto for the rest of the week.  I was awakened by a thunderstorm early this morning, and we can expect more every day as the heat develops, but my heart goes out to those in Joplin, Missouri, who lost their lives (over 90 people so far) in a devastating tornado yesterday evening.  The US has experienced a rash of violent tornadoes this Spring which have taken hundreds of lives, and this week is only going to add to the devastation and loss of life.  Many of those who died yesterday probably contributed some sort of aid to the victims of the Alabama/Mississippi/North Carolina tornadoes earlier this month, and now they are a statistic of yet another outbreak of tornadoes.  None of us knows when our last moment will be, and that's a good thing, but we need to be prepared to meet the Lord of the universe when that moment comes.  Are you ready?  Do YOU know the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior?  The suffering we experience in this life is nothing compared to the pain that awaits those who turn their backs on a loving God who desires you to KNOW HIM!  Jesus told us the meaning of eternal life in John 17:3, when he prayed for all mankind:  "Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."  How awesome is that!  God sent His Son Jesus so that we could know HIM!  I can't wrap my mind around the fact that God wants to have an intimate relationship with ME, but as I'm on the way to recovery, I'm going to spend more time in God's Word so that I may do just that -- know Him better.