A new definition of Humility

I want to confess that this week I am guilty of pride.   Hard for a guy to say such a thing on the internet; especially when he is soon to move to Rwanda as a missionary.  Well, I to am a sinner.  Romans 3:23 tells us that “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  This weekend I realized that my pride had interfered with another prayer that I have been giving to God over the last couple weeks.  As a result I have been praying this last couple of days for God to forgive me and to teach me something about humility.   I have two sayings about humility that I use commonly in times like this.

1.  I hope God will show me how to be humble without actually humiliating me.    

2.     When I think about the definition of humility I think of a man driving a Ferrari down the interstate at 55 mph.

 As the week has progressed God has changed my definition of humility and in the process helped change my heart this week.

This is my new definition of humility. 

As I was looking for something in my wallet this week I found this obituary.   I had put it away planning on saving it for future encouragement. 

 I have a story to tell about this servant.  I apologize that it is a bit of a long story but I can say that it was worth writing.

This woman is someone I watched die. She was admitted to the hospital in Tyler by what some would call “ an accident” but now looking back I see that it might have been her last act of service to come to my rescue this week but that would be selfish and I can say that she also came to die in Tyler so that she could touch many lives. 

She does not live in Tyler but rather, lives in Idaho and Seattle and was only visiting a friend in Tyler the weeks of her death and so again, we should have never met if it had not been God’s will.

I did not meet her first but rather she was admitted urgently and seen by my partner and then passed over to me at our weekly “changing of the guard”.   She was visiting friends in Tyler when she began having trouble breathing and after only hours she became completely unable to breath and was brought into the ER by ambulance.  She was taken urgently to surgery and had a breathing tube surgically placed in her neck and at that time found to have a large thyroid mass strangling her from the inside.   She recovered well after surgery but because of the breathing tube (a tracheotomy) she was not able to speak and was only able to write messages on a pad of paper.  On the third day her pathology came back and she had what was referred to as Papillary cancer of the thyroid with an adjacent area of poorly differentiated cells. 

Papillary cancer is the most common form of thyroid cancer and is very treatable and it is rare for anyone to die from this type of cancer.  It was odd that she had such a bad presentation but after the surgery we all sighed a sigh of relief because we thought she was going to be fine. 

After about week it was my turn to be on call and I can confess that I was not anxious to “babysit” a thyroid cancer lady while we waited for the state to send us a letter of permission for a special form of radiation for the treatment of her cancer.   Well to my delight she was engaging even on a pad of paper.  Over the next couple days I got to know a little bit about her but with her not being able to talk she was learning more about me than I was about her.  After a week she finally received her radiation dose and we said good-bye as she was discharged from the hospital. 

 

About a week later she was readmitted to the hospital for more shortness of breath but this time her trach was compressed and she was found to have masses all in her lungs.  By this time we knew it was not typical Papillary cancer.  A biopsy of the mass protruding into her new breathing tube was found to be Anaplastic thyroid cancer which is 100% fatal with no effective chemotherapy.  It grows so fast that it often looks like the surgery makes it explode.   The undifferentiated cells found on the original surgery were not part of the Papillary mass, they had been Anaplastic from the beginning.

 

Because it was shortly after the holiday my turn on call came back up sooner than usual and I was there this time when the pathology came back.  By this time the speech therapist had given her an attachment for her trach that allowed her to speak.  After I told her about the pathology and the prognosis she did not cry or sound surprised.  She simply said that she was ready to go.  I have heard this before and many people who say this are still scared and anxious but this woman was truly peaceful.  I actually thought her countenance was oddly peaceful.

 

I went to see her every day and I found myself unable to avoid going back.  I was so pleased to get to pray with her and to encourage her.  After 3 days I finally told her that I was moving from Tyler to become a missionary.  Even though she had never cried during any part of this ordeal, she did cry that day.  I thought it was strange.  I hardly knew her but she was crying over my leaving, or so I thought. 

 

Over the next couple of days we waited for a hospice bed to open up so she could leave the hospital and die in peace somewhere else.  She would ask me about Africa every day and on her last day in the hospital her sisters from Seattle came down to say good-bye and when I came in the room Ms. West exclaimed, “here’s the doctor that I told you about, the one moving to Africa.  They all shouted and spent the entire time talking about me and my family and our plans for Africa.  Here I was in the presense of this saint and even her family did not say a word about the work Ms. West did in South America.  They just kept praising God for the work in Africa.

 

That was the last day I saw her.  As I left she said to me, “I pray for you every day and I will keep you in my prayers”.  I didn’t really understand what that meant because I knew she was going away to die and that the last days of her life would be spent in Hospice with others at her side.  She would never see me again.

 

This week when I pulled her obituary out of my wallet and read it again I felt humbled.  I know that she did not go to South America to become the woman in this obituary but she trusted God to use her and to make her what he wanted her to become.  She was a woman who did not let pride interfere with God’s plan for her life.  She trusted him and he gave her his whole spirit.

 

She never told me she was a missionary.  Not even during all the conversations we had about Africa and my plans to move did she or sisters ever say a word.

Today, as I sat thinking of her praying for me with her last breath, I felt God reshaping my heart and teaching me a lesson about humility.

 

When I need a definition or image of humility to share with my kids or others, I will take out this obituary and share this story.

Saying Goodbye

The final goodbyes have begun.  

In my practice I see patients back at different intervals based on the acuity of their illness and in some cases the acuity of their mental state.  Some I choose to bring back because their illness requires it and some come back whether they or I need it.  I have patients that come back yearly for the followup ultrasound of their thyroid, some that come back every six months and so on down the time line.  

I have began to tell my patients this past week that I was leaving and every  day I have crying.

I have been practicing for 6 1/2 years in Tyler and I always find it hard believe that I have truly helped that much.  I always feel that I am doing my best but never feel that I have done enough.  I find now as I tell those who come to see me that they have put their lives in my hands and they feel that it was I who changed their lives.  

As I think about these patients and their encouraging words I begin to think about the work God has called me to in Rwanda.  I go into this not fully sure how God is going to use me but I know that His plan is amazing and involves the saving of a people and I pray that just like my practice I have the chance some day to be able to look back and see how God has used me and to see how he has blessed others by His hand on me.  I only pray that God will let me be even a small part of his plan.