Andrew is home and had the surgery. There were so many miracles that worked together to make this happen!
He was struggling with the pain in Brazil, and his recovery from the surgery there hit a plateau and then he experienced some serious pain. The surgeon spent 2 ½ hours trying to remove the plate there, and ended up removing two screws and breaking eight more before deciding not to go on. It was a very dark moment in Andrew’s life.
The decision was finally made to send him home to have it redone by an American surgeon, and I got an appointment with a general practitioner in order to get a referral to a surgeon. Many people told me to just use Mission Medical, but my information is that the Elders aren’t insured-their expenses are paid by donations. Andrew is still covered by Kaiser, so I thought I’d attempt to work him through the system ASAP. The first appointment I got really fast, the surgeon appointment was 3 ½ weeks out. I started calling everyday for cancellations, and got it bumped up one week. Then I was told after he saw the surgeon the scheduling for surgery could be 9-12 weeks out. One person even told me that it took seven months to get a shoulder surgery done through Kaiser. So we expected the worst. Andrew was assigned to the Carlsbad mission unofficially where he worked with another elder that was having medical issues.
We met at the surgeon’s office, and discovered the doctor had a Mormon uncle. He joked with us about Mormon’s preoccupation with geography (his uncle must go to his own ward, won’t go to church by his house). After the consult and deciding that the surgery was advisable (though he was not excited about what he might find) he asked Andrew when he wanted to do it. Andrew said-“I’m home to have this done, ASAP, whenever you can do it.” So the surgeon responded with ‘how about tomorrow?’
We thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. Many, many circumstances occurred to make this possible:
- Bumping the appointment up to get this particular doctor
- Did the Mormon uncle soften his heart toward this elder?
- Andrew and companion presented with white shirt and ties with tags
- This doctor is leaving in a month for a New Zealand sabbatical, where he is planning on helping with their backlog of 100 pediatric spinal patients waiting for surgery-so he said he needed to get as much done in a timely manner as possible.
- This is the big one: This surgeon was scheduled to do trauma surgery the next day-the operating room was set aside to be used as needed for trauma. There were only two trauma cases scheduled, so he said that he would put Andrew on the schedule. There would be a chance of being bumped, but if there were no new cases Andrew’s surgery would proceed. There ended up being five surgeries on that day, Andrew’s was one of them.
Then, after the surgery when he went to see Andrew, he expressed with pleasure that it took him 10 minutes to remove the plate. Unreal.
Andrew was released from his mission on Saturday-he has a six week recovery period after which he has to get a note from the doctor releasing him for service and send it in with a letter requesting to be reassigned. He has pain meds, which don’t completely cover the pain but help. He is at a loss for what to do, but his attitude is good.
Prayers are answered. What a week.
