It was day 8 post-tonsillectomy and I was frustrated. For a few nights now, I had been unable to sleep at night. I would be utterly exhausted and struggling to stay awake but the moment I turned off the light and lay my head on my pillow, I would be wide awake. I had been taking melatonin to help me sleep, with limited success. That night, I was fed up and didn’t want to take it.
After tossing in bed for almost 2 hours, I decided to sit up and scroll through Facebook. About 20 minutes later, I felt a lot of thick saliva in my throat. I thought I had better check as I had suffered a small bleed earlier in the morning. True enough, my throat had started bleeding again. I quickly sucked on some ice and the bleeding stopped. Less than 15 minutes later, the bleeding restarted. I didn’t want to go to A&E because I figured it would stop again soon, but I felt a sudden sense of urgency to get to A&E. As I prepped my bag, I realised that the blood wasn’t stopping and I just kept spitting blood whenever there wasn’t any ice in my mouth.
I rushed to A&E, where the doctors tried to cauterise the bleed to avert the need for an operation. However, the ENT doctor could not stem the flow of blood. Whenever she cauterised one area, another would open up and bleed again. The specialist surgeon was called and I was prepped for emergency surgery.
Other than constantly spitting out a lot of blood, I was generally feeling ok. But just as I was about to be wheeled in to surgery, I suddenly felt woozy. Everything looked a bit grey and grainy and I didn’t feel good.
As I lay down on the operating table with the oxygen mask, I could feel the blood pooling in my throat and prayed for God’s protection because I didn’t want to leave my children (Isaac and Iva) without a mother.
When I awoke after the surgery, I was told that just before I went under general anaesthesia, the bleeding suddenly became severe. Within the short time between intubation and finally cauterising that troublemaker of a blood vessel, I had lost 500ml of blood from a tiny hole.
It was only when I was discharged that the gravity of the situation hit me.
It had taken 30 minutes for the specialist surgeon to get to the hospital and for the doctors to prep for my surgery. Had I gone to the A&E a little bit later than I did, I wouldn’t have been in surgery to stop the bleeding in time and would have lost even more blood.
I had been so frustrated with God for not giving me sleep the previous few nights. Yet if I had taken melatonin and it was effective, I might not have woken up in time.
I felt the weight of God’s protection, grace and mercy over me. In protecting me, He showed me His immense love for my children too, whom I value very much. This incident was also a reminder to me that God is always good. Even when He does not answer my prayers for simple things, He has a good reason for it. The original date of my tonsillectomy had been postponed from August due to a bout of tonsilitis. This was also His mercy because if I had done the procedure as planned, this post-op bleeding would have required me to take no pay leave from the school where I teach, as it was not yet the school holidays. All these things I could not see except in retrospect.
This incident drove home the message of His grace, sovereignty and goodness over my life. Indeed His goodness, mercies and grace abound. All praise and thanksgiving to Him who is most High.
