God's Protection

In my last blog post I mentioned that we had witnessed God's protection over us while I was in the hospital. To explain, let me first back up a few years. Close to about 4 years ago, I went in for minor laparoscopic surgery to try to address some infertility issues that we had been dealing with. The surgery never actually happened because I had a severe allergic reaction to one of the medications that was being pumped into me and went into anaphylactic shock on the operating table. They literally had to fight to save my life. At the time, the anesthesiologist said that he had never seen a reaction like that and that although he couldn't be 100% sure which medication caused the reaction (they give you antibiotics, anesthesia, etc. in your IV at the same time), he was fairly certain that it would have to have been the particular anesthetic they used that could have caused that sort of reaction. The antibiotic used was a very common antibiotic and he had never seen it cause that sort of reaction. So, although we couldn't be certain, we went on the assumption that the anesthetic was what I was severely allergic to. It wasn't too big of a concern on a go-forward basis because it's not something that is commonly given.

Fast forward to my stay in the hospital where things appeared to continue to go wrong. The heavy bleeding lead the hospital stay and to the medications to stop the contractions and bleeding, which lead to me having to be completely immobile, which lead to the use of the catheter, which lead to the bladder infection, which lead to the kidney infection, which lead to the antibiotics that were put in my IV.  It seemed like things just kept getting worse and worse. Well, they started me on a slow drip of a very commonly used antibiotic, Ancef, in my IV to address the infections, and immediately I started to have an allergic reaction. Within the first minute of them starting the drip, I began to itch all over, started breaking out in hives, felt my face going numb, and just started feeling really funny. I called the nurse back right away and she recognized that I was having an allergic reaction, stopped the drip and starting putting benadryl in the IV instead.

So, although maybe none of that sounds like God's protection yet, here's the amazing thing...the nurse said that Ancef is the routine antibiotic that is used prior to a c-section, and that before the surgery, you are not put on a slow drip, but it is all pumped into you at once - just like it was done prior to the laparoscopic surgery I was supposed to have 4 years ago. If that had happened again prior to the c-section, it very well could have been life-threatening for me or for the baby or for both of us.

So, what appeared to be everything going wrong, was really, I believe, God protecting us from something far worse. And, in that moment, I really got a sense of His faithfulness to us and His control over the trials that we are being faced with.