*WARNING DEPRESSING POST*

Phew! Another week down...!
It's been quite a tiring and emotionally draining week; I saw some very very sad cases in the hospital; a poor man who, a few years ago, had a malignant melenoma (skin cancer) in his eye, and had to have his eye removed in the process. Last week he came to the hospital because he wasn't feeling quite right and on examination he had a huge liver....meaning that the melenoma was, almost certainly, still there and spread to his liver.....6 days later he died. It was so sad because every day his family was there by his bed-side with red and puffy eyes, hoping for some good news when the doctors came round....and they could never really give them any, and then, he just deteriorated...and that was it.

And then in the A&E Department ('ER' for the Americans), a young-ish guy came in (probably early-50s) with his wife and daughters about my age, because he'd had some double vision for a couple of weeks when looking to one side.....
and his brain scan showed a large area of shadowing..
....meaning he has a brain tumour.
and his family & him have no idea
and noone really told them (they were sending him to a more specialist hospital to do some more definitive tests before breaking the horrific bad news). (but his story and the time-course of the double vision fits the growth of something like a tumour, rather than say an infective abscess).
and they could sense it must be something serious because the doctors said they had to keep him in hospital till he was transferred to the other hospital.

and his prognosis is very very poor.

oh, it was so sad.

It makes you realise the fragility of life, and the importance of every moment that is given to you as a gift by God.
We have no idea what is round the corner. One day everything can be fine, and then the next, you are fighting for life. It's shocking how seldom society on the whole considers daily the only certainly in life.....death, and how little effort is made to store up riches for the eternity that follows.

How fitting a reminder the words on Ash Wednesday; "Remember that dust you are, and to dust you shall return" - "Repent and believe in the Gospel".


Something perhaps to consider doing during Lent.....if you pass by a hospital, a nursing home, an ambulance, PLEASE PLEASE pray for the person(s) inside; for mercy and for their conversion. So few people seem to consider God while they are dying.